


Nattväsen

by monstersinthecosmos



Category: Voltron: Legendary Defender
Genre: Alternate Universe - Vampire, Alternate Universe - Witchcraft, Blood Drinking, Cisswap, Cunnilingus, Extreme Age Gap, F/F, Genderswap, Goth Keith (Voltron), Halloween!, LMAO shiro is like 2000 years old, Masturbation, Psychic vampire, Sex Toys, Sugar Mama, Vaginal Fingering, Vampire Shiro (Voltron), Witch Keith (Voltron), femsheith, femsheith exchange, how problematic, pot smoking
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-09-27
Updated: 2020-09-27
Packaged: 2021-03-08 00:40:03
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 22,099
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26686783
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/monstersinthecosmos/pseuds/monstersinthecosmos
Summary: A week from Halloween and Keith's weird little life starts to get weirder.
Relationships: Keith/Shiro (Voltron)
Comments: 24
Kudos: 81
Collections: Femsheith Exchange 2020





	Nattväsen

**Author's Note:**

> Named after [Nattväsen by Carbon Based Lifeforms](https://youtu.be/nRnEMnaBFxE). I also was listening to a lot of Azam Ali and Darkher and Arcana while I was writing in case you need any spooky girl vibes. 
> 
> I wrote this for @cosmogonists for the femsheith exchange! I smushed a bunch of the prompts together, I hope it's okay! <3 
> 
> OH ALSO I was using [The Wild Unknown](https://www.thewildunknown.com/collections/shop-the-magic) tarot deck as a reference, these are the cards Keith is using. :)

**SATURDAY**

* * *

This weird thing happens on Saturday night at the club.

Saturday means she’s at the regular club. She hates the music, but there are more people. They swell all around her as she dances in the middle of the room, by herself, and she feels their heat, their energy, their hands on her. _Their eyes_. 

Someone is watching her.

It’s not the usual way people watch her—there’s always someone watching her. But her eyes are closed and it feels like cold fingers on the back of her neck, something ethereal, something strange. 

The music sucks and she mostly tunes it out, only hears the bassline, lets it guide the sway of her body. And in the dark, with her eyes closed, she can still sense the colors around her. They each have one, all of the people here, and she sees the way they go hazy as the energy draws into her. It tingles in the bottom of her head, flows down to her sternum, between her ribs, between her legs. It fills her, sates her. 

She does her best to focus but feels the presence. It puts a chill into the stream, has her on edge. 

It makes her move faster, weave between bodies, breathe harder like it might help. She absorbs energy faster but it doesn’t shake the weird feeling. Makes her feel a little drunk on it. 

When she opens her eyes she can’t help looking around, trying to pinpoint where it’s coming from. She sees the drunk women near her, the clueless men. Puts names to faces in a sense, still able to taste bits of their souls. The eyes are still on her, and she turns a circle in the middle of the floor, squinting towards the dark corners of the room, but there are no hints. 

Filled, and creeped out, the music is overbearing now. She hurries out, bumps through the warm bodies. They’re disgusting, now that she’s full. She shudders at the feel of damp skin, the smell of booze and heavy perfume. Just wants to get out. 

She grabs her hoodie from the coat room, feels for the knife she left in the pocket. Draws the hood up and holds the hilt of the blade in her pocket the whole walk home. 

The feeling doesn’t go away.

**SUNDAY**

* * *

Keith always feels weird the next day, after the clubs.

She doesn’t like to call it _hunting_ necessarily. Not sure what to call it. She hungers for it, though, needs it. But it buzzes in her brain the next morning, every time. It takes a while to absorb, to settle in, to feel right.

_Feeding_ , she could call it. 

She’d crashed hard last night, as soon as she got home. Her stupid little apartment is rigged with protections and the presence dissipated as soon as she came inside. That was good, at least it proves that the spells work. She hadn’t even changed out of her clothes, just flopped onto her bed and passed the fuck out.

Crashed hard and slept in.

Eupheme wakes her though. Eupheme the cat. Way too heavy to be stepping on her chest in the morning, meowing in her face for breakfast. Keith groans, can’t open her eyes right away.

“Fucking relax,” she mutters, but it gets her up. The button on her jeans is digging into her skin from sleeping in them, and she peels them off, marveling at the red indents from the seams, rubbing over them as she makes her way out to the kitchen pantsless. She scratches Eupheme’s head as she sets out the food, then makes herself a coffee. 

The energy is a balm in her spine, radiating down into her fingertips. And she needs it, it’s nice, but it’s too much. It alway feels like too much at first.

It’s somewhat of a ritual, really, the next day. She packs a bowl as she drinks her coffee, runs the bathtub, fills it with oils. Lights the candles. Leans against the bathroom sink and scrolls on her phone as she waits. New order pending in her shop that she can pack up later. A new Ko-fi with a note about her last herb drying tutorial. Nice.

She strips off the rest of her clothes when the tub is ready, lowers herself into it. 

Her apartment isn’t the best. It’s a little seedy and there are some leaks. She thinks she mostly picked it for the bathroom, with a huge tub and tons of light. She spends a lot of time in here, she can admit that. 

The oils in the water sing against her skin, she feels the way they work themselves in. She just waits for a moment, lets it all soak in, lets the buzzing quiet down. Her heart pounds beneath the heat and she breathes through it. 

It’s right as she’s starting to smell the fragrance of the candles that she lights up her bubbler, takes the first hit. The sound of the water always relaxes her before the weed even hits. It’s a cute little pipe; glass and shaped like a tentacle. Her fingers rub over the tiny purple suckers. 

And she can’t explain, she never can. The way it snakes through her blood, the way it smoothes out all the stolen energy. 

She props her elbow on the side of the tub, keeps the pipe dry as she sinks down under the water, submerges her head. It puts the world on mute for a little bit, only hearing her own heartbeat. She stays down, serene at first, the urgency slowly creeping in as her body reminds her to _breathe breathe breathe._

But she remembers something.

Something about last night, about the watcher. A cold spot in the room. 

She sits up, breaks through the water with a gasp. 

There’s no presence anymore; she feels safe in her apartment, in the warm patch of sunlight from the window. It doesn’t feel like danger anymore, but… 

Something weird about it. It gives her chills. She takes another hit from the bubbler and slides lower in the tub, the water coming up to her chin. Exhales smoke through her nose. It has a piney kind of smell that cloys in her throat, and the tangible feeling of it helps to stay grounded.

The presence didn’t taint the energy she absorbed, she doesn’t think. It still feels potent inside. But it puts her on edge nonetheless, leaves her with a twinge of anxiety that she can’t shake for the rest of the day.

That night she skips her live stream. She feels fed but doesn’t feel up to others just yet, still trying to parse everything. She finishes up some homework, cranks through an essay she’s been putting off. Eats cold Thai leftovers and goes to sweep dead leaves off her balcony. Time to herself, quiet. It helps lock all the energy in place.

Before bed she lights a candle and sits cross-legged on top of her covers, petting the cat with one hand and drawing cards with the other. It’s a simple spread, one she likes after confusing days.

They surround her in an arc on the bed and she considers each carefully. Eupheme purrs as she scratches behind her ears, tries to decide what she thinks of everything.

She hesitates as she flips the card for the destiny spot, pressing into the edges of the card and feeling the weight of it there before she finally looks. 

Nine of Pentacles, reversed. Seems like a joke.

She rolls her eyes. “Whatever.”

**MONDAY**

* * *

Allura knows about all of Keith’s little side hustles, and she tolerates them when Keith is on the clock.

Keith appreciates it, of course. It’s why she does her best not to let it interfere with anything. She sits behind the counter in Allura’s shop, hands down in her lap as she works on a pendant. The routine of wrapping it feels natural to her by now, and she’s almost trance-like as she watches her own fingers twisting and curling the wire. 

It’s dead in the store most nights; only so many locals into crystals and witch books. But Allura’s readings keep the doors open. People pay money. Lots of money. Keith tries to keep the hero worship to a minimum, because Allura always knows what she’s thinking and it’s fucking mortifying, but it would be cool to get to that level one day.

So Allura has her private room upstairs, up the iron spiral staircase in the corner, and Keith holds down the shop while she does her thing. There are regulars who stop in for oil and incense, and tourist types who just want to look at the witchcraft books and giggle like they’re doing something naughty. Occasional doe-eyed teenagers who feel so drawn to everything they can’t afford. Keith likes those ones, they’re cute. But usually it’s quiet, basically dead. So Keith sits cross-legged on the chair behind the counter, a little cramped and constantly almost falling over and yet determined to perch herself like a gremlin at all times. She spends a lot of her shifts working on homework, sometimes catching up on crafts for her online shops. And Allura tolerates it.

Her fingertips are getting sore from the wires but she wants to plow through; autumn is a popular time for the spooky hipster tourist girls and she has a final tuition installment due soon. She’s trying to shape the wires to look like pumpkin stems, bending out cute little leaves. There’s a pile of sunstone and tiger eye gems on the glass countertop, and her fingers tingle every time she picks a new one. The color shimmers like a pulse, once, twice, and she feels their energies sparkling in her hand as she works.

Tourists will buy these, and they’ll take cute selfies in them for Instagram, and maybe they even believe in them a little. Keith isn’t that cynical, she doesn’t think. Some of them are as sincere as they’re capable of being. But for Keith it’s… different.

Too real, or something. 

She hears noise at the top of the stairs and straightens up a little bit, makes the counter top presentable as Allura comes down with her client. They kiss each other on the cheeks before the woman bundles her coat around herself and steps out into the October night.

Allura watches the woman from the door for a moment, arms crossed over her chest, and Keith scrambles for ideas for small talk but comes up short. Allura turns to her and raises an eyebrow, amused like she always is. 

“You need to relax,” she says. She crosses the shop—it’s so small inside, it only takes a few steps—and leans her elbows on the counter. “I can feel you upstairs when you’re anxious, you know. It throws off my readings.”

Keith’s face burns. “Sorry.”

Allura casually leans closer to look at Keith’s gems. She picks up one of the sunstones and it flashes, the same way it does for Keith. Allura’s the only other person she’s seen them do that for. It makes Keith’s heart pound.

“Pretty,” Allura says. She smiles, thoughtful and dreamy, and puts it back where she found it. “Well, upstairs is all yours. Bedtime for me.”

And this is how it usually goes.

Allura is cool about the side hustles. She doesn’t care that Keith has other projects to work on when it’s dead in the shop. And she lets Keith use her room upstairs, after hours, when everyone’s gone.

Keith rushes through closing; locking up the door, counting the register, emailing Allura the revenue report. She throws all her jewelry making stuff into her backpack and springs upstairs.

There’s just something about this room, hero worship aside. Keith suspects it’s why Allura put the shop here. Something about the air up there. Always charged, always makes the hair rise on Keith’s neck. It’s a nexus of energy, so much power in one space. 

It’s cool, too, Keith can admit. Allura has a whole shelf of custom Afro Tarot decks, and all the special books are up here, the ones that aren’t for sale. Even some of the books have a charge, radiate a force into the room. 

A lot of this stuff hadn’t been important to Keith until she met Allura. She’s become less cynical about the ritual aspect, the material. Ever since she met Allura and started reading the books, she’s felt more in control of this… _thing_. This way she is. It’s always been with her, since she can remember, but it finally has a meaning.

She grinds her teeth as she sets her backpack down and starts arranging on the floor. It’s still hard to shake the idea that she doesn’t need it, doesn’t need anyone. Getting too reverent about the whole thing feels so cheesy sometimes. Like, sure, it has a meaning. Sure, she has a gift. But she also owes her college a shit ton of money and isn’t above doing a few parlor tricks for cash.

No one was more surprised than Keith that her projects took off online. She hadn’t thought she was pretty enough, charming enough. Not to be a tool about it, but she’s never felt ~like other girls~. She’s not so friendly sometimes. Her sense of humor is so dry and sarcastic. It always seemed to her that people wanted those cute femme witches, with lots of jewelry and cute glasses, nice nails and breathy voices. Keith isn’t like that at all. 

But they like her, for some reason. So she’s trying.

She grabs her laptop out of her bag and sets up the tripod for her phone, gets everything arranged. Allura has this adorable zodiac rug that Keith likes to set up on; it makes a cute background for the cards. She split screens so that she can show her face, as well, even though she doesn’t love that part. The people want to see her, though, and it helps on those weird dead space moments between clients. 

And it starts like that. She crosses her legs and chews her fingernail until the feed goes live, gives it a minute for the first few viewers to show up.

“Hey everyone,” she says, with an awkward wave. This is always the worst part, until she warms up. Once she’s working it’ll be easier, she knows that. Just has to get there.

These types of streams she does quick three card spreads for tippers. It helps them go quick, easy way to make a buck. She’ll schedule people for private video calls if they need more than that. Those will pay for more, that’s the goal in the end. Just like how Allura does it. 

Chatting doesn’t come easily to her, but there are enough viewers asking her questions that she can roll with it. Sometimes they ask her about magic stuff and Keith has to focus to try to explain. It’s a gift, she knows. It comes to her effortlessly, and teaching it can be a bit daunting. But they admire that about her, they understand. They ask how it feels, they ask how long she’s known. Sometimes they ask about her life, and Keith tries to skirt around it. Is she queer? Does she have a girlfriend? She shuffles the cards in between reads, stares down at her hands. She’s gotta stop biting her nails, jesus christ.

It goes on long enough that she gets into a groove and relaxes, feeling more natural. She’s just finished up explaining what they’ve been talking about in her Social Policy Analysis class when she glances at the clock in the corner of the laptop screen.

“Oh, shit guys,” she says, and grabs for her deck of cards. “I gotta get going. I can do one more if anyone wants.”

There’s a ping from a tip, and the sound of it gives her a twinge on the back of her neck like she’d felt at the club the other night. She tries not to show it in her face. Five dollar tip, that’s the starting rate, and sometimes they tip her more after if they’re happy. Sometimes people tip her out of pity, she supposes. But that’s the price to get it rolling.

It’s a gibberish screen name, a throwaway. It makes Keith pause, not sure what to call the person. She hopes it’s graceful as she bypasses addressing them all together.

“Thanks,” she says. She shuffles the cards, enjoying the weight of them in her hands. This deck is thick, old, and the power glows in the paper. “So, um, if anyone’s just tuning in we’re doing trilogy spreads.” 

She glances at the cards, then back up the screen. “What can I call you?”

The chat log is quiet for a moment, and Keith almost moves ahead, but they finally answer.

_S_.

Keith laughs nervously. “Okay, S. Is there anything in particular you’re looking for tonight?”

S doesn’t answer. Keith keeps shuffling the cards. Sometimes people’s connections can be wonky, but it looks like S is still active. Staring at her name there makes the back of Keith’s neck tingle. 

“Not much of a talker, huh?” she asks. A few _lol_ ’s pop up in the chat from the other viewers. “Well, that’s okay. I’m not usually much of a talker, either.”

This is normally where she makes conversation with the client, tries to connect with them on some level. It’s strange how technology aids in the process, trying to grasp feelings about others through the ether like this, but it seems to work. Asking questions and focusing on their stupid little screennames trills in the bottom of her head, rings like radio feedback, and she can still… sense them. Out there.

A lot of the clients are just more tourist girls asking for advice about their boyfriends. Keith plays along and tries not to just throw the cards in the air and scream at them to just break up already. And she gets these like, cute baby queers sometimes. She’s amassed somewhat of a following and doesn’t really get why. But okay. 

S, though.

Keith shrugs. She cracks her neck and stares at the screen name, tries to imagine where they are in the world. How far away they are, what time zone. If they can see the moon from where they are, if they’re hungry. It’s never literal information, just intuition, instincts. And it’s the same now. No words, no visions this time, but…

The hair rises on her arms. She fidgets in place, tries to move her hands faster as she shuffles to make sure no one notices the goosebumps. Tries to keep cool.

“Well, here we go, S,” she says. She lays the pile flat, by her left knee, and fans it out into an arc with her right hand. It’s not something that shows on camera, but Keith can see the waves between the cards and the palm of her hand, invisible like heat. She rocks side to side, unconsciously, closing her eyes and feeling for the cards she wants. She sucks on the jewelry in her side labret. 

There’s a tiny shock when she puts her hand down, blindly, that’s how she knows it’s the right card. She slides it out from the others and opens her eyes.

“In trilogy spreads I like to think about our minds, bodies, and souls,” she explains. The energy is running through her and it makes her voice quiet and flat, deeply focused. “So this first card is for your mind, S.”

She tilts it back and forth between her fingers for a moment, watching the screen for a response. The name is still there, in purple, still online. Watching.

“Is there anything on your mind?” She holds her breath as she waits for an answer and she’s about to give up and continue when S just writes _Yes_. Keith blinks at the screen and the card feels warm in her hand. “Okay, well. Feel free to share, I guess.”

S doesn’t say anything else, doesn’t offer any literal guide for context. Keith shrugs, finally, and flips the card onto the floor. Her heart skips in her chest.

“So this is the Tower, reversed,” she says, and her finger traces over the picture on the card. It shows lightning splitting a tree in half, causing a fire. She chews on her lip and glances again to see if S has anything to say. “When you get this card sometimes it means that you’re trying to keep yourself safe from danger. You might be making decisions to avoid disasters and letting fear dictate your choices. Maybe you’ve been avoiding a big change. But the card is reversed, so…” she takes a deep breath, feeling for S again, trying to get a sense if she’s on the right track. “Maybe you need to confront the thing.”

There’s still no response from S in the chat, but some of the other viewers have chimed in with agreement. Someone sends Keith a dollar tip. Keith gives S a moment, despite her confidence that she’ll only get silence, before she tries for the next card. There’s a sort of magnetic pull to the right one, blips of sensation as her hand passes back and forth over the deck. 

“We’re going to look at body next,” she says, as she selects the right one and places it down. It’s angled inwards, corner touching the Tower, and in a moment when she gets to the third, the empty space between them will form a triangle. She sucks at her lip ring again as she looks at the cards. “You got the 10 of Swords this time. So when we’re talking about your body or your health, it might mean something is very wrong. You might feel betrayed by your body or trapped in it. I’m wondering if this has anything to do with drawing the Tower. Your condition might be informing the fear we talked about. This card tells me that things are pretty bad with you, S. It might mean you’ve hit rock bottom. But I think when you compare it to your Tower card it means it’s time you deal with what’s wrong. The only way out is through, you know?”

There are some _ooh_ ’s and _ahh_ ’s in the chat and Keith breathes slowly, tries to nourish the connection between them. She wonders if she can coax S this way, if it can go two ways.

She nudges the card to perfect the angle, giving S another moment to respond, and almost gives up when the message pops up.

_Understood_.

Keith raises an eyebrow. Okay then. 

“Well, this is the last card,” she says, and closes her eyes to feel for it. “This one is for your soul.”

It stings her fingertips when she touches it but she tries not to show the shock on her face. She opens her eyes when she flips it, as she sets it into place to complete the triangle.

The Moon.

She clears her throat and presses her thumb into the moon in the drawing. “So the Moon is an interesting card.” It’s upside-down, like the Tower, so that they point towards each other. “This deck illustrates it using these two trees, see?” She rubs her fingers along the tree trunks and peeks at the chat log. 

Someone comments what a pretty deck it is and someone else asks where to get it, but S says nothing.

“We have the moon between the trees here, sort of illuminating your path. It’s possible that you’ve been lying to yourself lately, maybe about all the fear you’re experiencing. The Moon likes to tell us that things aren’t always as they seem, so perhaps we are witnessing the solution to a deception. I think that, with what we’ve learned from your other cards, what this is telling me is that you _want_ a change, you want to resolve these things that are bothering you. The moon pulls us and dictates the tides, and maybe you’ve been fighting against it for too long. Are you exhausted?”

She doesn’t look at the screen, but feels the silence humming in her spine. 

“It’s interesting that this card uses trees. Not all of them do. But I can’t help but notice the way this Tower is a tree as well. They’re pointing towards each other, see?”

Her fingertips sweep up the trunk of the Tower and make the hop across the space between the cards, landing on the two in the Moon card. “This makes me think perhaps you are stronger when you’re not alone. Perhaps there is a person you’ve been keeping in the dark, and maybe they’re part of the puzzle to lead you out of this situation. It’s time to be vulnerable and reveal yourself, admit you need them.”

There’s a surge in her chest, a heat, and she looks up at the screen. It’s hard to explain why—most of it is—but she can _feel_ S watching her, almost like she’s seeing herself through S’s eyes. 

“The Moon is your way out,” she says, staring directly into the camera.

_Thank you,_ S says, and then signs off. 

The screenname disappears from the sidebar but the feel of S’s soul is still trapped inside Keith’s brain, hooked in with claws. 

She gapes at the screen in awkward silence for a moment, unaware how much time is passing, until someone says _lol is your camera frozen?_ She blinks hard and blushes, shakes her head. Stumbles through a sign off and turns off the camera. She stares at the tiny webcam lens for a moment, still feeling like they’re watching her, and slides the cover over it. 

It takes a moment to get her bearings, and she starts sweeping her cards into a pile to put away, when another ping comes through the speaker. Anonymous tip after she’d gone off the air, blinking there.

“What the fuck?” She drags the computer into her lap to look closer, make sure she’s not imagining it. “What the fuck.” 

Five hundred dollars?

Five hundred fucking dollars.

The presence glows in her body and she slaps her laptop closed, shoves her things into her backpack. Some of Allura’s crystals are flickering as she double-checks that the windows are closed and fumbles for her keys, hands shaking as she rushes down the steps and out the door. The bell rings as she slams it shut and locks up, then turns to the quiet street.

Her breath hangs in the air in front of her and she wishes she’d worn a jacket, but her heart is racing and it doesn’t seem important.

It’s odd, as she starts off in a jog towards her apartment, that this strange psychic invasion doesn’t feel dangerous. Unnatural and dark, yes, but… she can still feel eyes on her but it feels safe, like she’s been watched over. 

The feeling dissipates once she’s in her apartment, and she double-locks the door as she whispers the incantation to reinforce the protections. She steps back and watches, waiting for the knob to start rattling, waiting for some intruder, but nothing happens. 

Eupheme weaves around her ankles and she rubs the goosebumps on her arms, trying to warm up. She picks up the cat and cuddles her close, kicks off her shoes and goes to curl into the corner of the couch. 

The hard edge of her phone is digging into her hip bone and she fishes it out of her pocket, staring at the glossy black surface, almost afraid to unlock it. It’s hard to say if she wants to know, if she wants to admit that what happened was real. She scratches the cat’s head with one hand to ground herself as she keys in her passcode with the other, and then opens the email summary of her livestream.

Five hundred fucking dollars. 

It tugs at the corners of her mouth and she turns to bury her face into Eupheme’s fur, feeling beyond silly to be cheesing at her phone like this. It’s overbearing and a bit creepy, a lot of pressure, but… it’s a lot. That’s like half of the tuition bill. _Fuck_. Smiling is so stupid. She keeps hiding in the cat until she calms down. 

“So fucking weird,” she says to Eupheme. She takes a few deep breaths and finally puts the cat aside, gets up to go make tea. Forgot to eat dinner, whoops. She starts pawing through the cabinets to see what she can come up with.

“People don’t just do stuff like that,” she says out loud. Eupheme hops onto the counter and watches her, almost like she’s really listening. “I mean, I’m not complaining. I’ll take whatever we can get. But people don’t do this.”

Eupheme tilts her head, like Keith is missing something obvious. It gives Keith the chills and breaks in like a revelation.

Maybe S isn’t a fucking person.

**TUESDAY**

* * *

She can’t focus during her classes the next day, can’t stop bouncing her leg under the desk. It’s not just that she’s distracted, but that she feels so… _consumed_. 

Doing livestreams can be mentally exhausting, she knows that. Does her best not to push herself. And last night’s had been pretty fucking exhausting. The weird huge tip at the end had been such a distraction, though, ballooning her energy into a giddy, nervous high for the rest of the night.

It means the crash is even harder.

The emotions are too mixed together; she doesn’t know where to put them. The money is a relief, very much so, but the longer she thinks about it the more sickening it is. It’s unsettling, and she keeps checking her banking app on her phone under the desk to make sure it’s real. It pinches in her stomach every time.

Class is taking forever and she hasn’t heard a word of it. Everything feels far away. Her skin feels too tight. With forty-five minutes left, she holds her breath and slips out while the professor’s back is turned, unable to take it anymore.

Cool autumn air is a relief. The sun is starting to go down and she pulls her hoodie up, puts her headphones in. She keeps the music low, feeling paranoid, like she might need to hear what’s happening around her, but lets the music absorb and calm her.

It’s a nice walk home, though. Ironically, she knows she can afford to splurge a little, considers calling a Lyft, but doesn’t want to be around anyone just yet. She stuffs her hands into her jacket pockets and stomps through crunchy leaves. It’s so vivid, all these details, and it helps keep her in her body.

The cat is totally judging her when she gets home. Keith rolls her eyes. 

“Like you’ve never cut class?”

Whatever. 

She makes coffee and feeds Eupheme. Washes her face. Checks her phone again.

There’s too many feelings mixed together and her stomach hurts as she tries to parse it. Even just thinking about it makes her eyes feel itchy, heavy, like she could sleep for three days. She chews on her thumbnail and glances at the clock.

Maybe she could go feed.

The hunger curls through her body and she shudders, shakes her hands out. Her teeth chatter. It’s a little early but she could kill some time. Have something to eat, take a shower. Then the club will be open. 

It’s too soon, she just went on Saturday. She sits down at one of the kitchen chairs and holds the back of her head, folds her body down. Taps her foot over and over. 

Not hungry, is the problem. Well, not for food. She scrubs her hands over her face and wants to check her phone again, but forces herself not to look. Eupheme comes and sits between her feet, right where Keith can see her, and her eyes are big and clear and knowing as she stares. It’s sort of confrontational. Keith sighs and scratches her head.

“I know,” she mumbles. Everything in her brain feels fuzzy, the room still feels far away, but she pets the cat a few more times to try to focus and forces herself to get up, to move around. She starts peeling her clothes off, leaving them in a trail on the way to the bathroom, lighting candles and incense while she waits for the water to warm up.

She just stands there in the spray for a while, trying to let her head clear. The anxiety is all around her, like one wrong step and she’ll collapse into it. She wants to scream. It’s all she can think about, imagining that she should scream. She kneels down on the floor of the tub, lets the water rinse across her shoulders and tries to imagine it could rinse away the tension. But she still wants to scream. Wants to scream wants to scream.

At some point she reaches blindly to shut the water off, but she still stays there, basically in child’s pose, waiting as the water runs down the drain. Waits until the air feels too cold, her muscles going stiff. It takes all of her focus to look up to the window, but it’s dark now. Maybe she can leave soon. She can go to… _hunt_.

It’s a conscious effort to take her time getting ready. She towels off, takes time picking an outfit. Normally she doesn’t care how she looks at the clubs, but…

She tucks the ripped black jeans into the stompy boots. Tucks the Dead Can Dance cutoff tee into the jeans. Heavy belt, wallet chain. She’ll wear her leather jacket on top, when it’s time to go. Eupheme watches her from the foot of the bed as she grabs her discarded towel off the floor and goes a little harder at her hair. It’s short enough, just needs a little effort. She steps back into the bathroom to comb it, to use some product. 

One day, if she decides to stop being such a swamp monster of a woman, she’ll actually watch some of the cute YouTube girls and learn how to do her hair properly. Until then she’ll keep throwing it in at random, just for some body, running her fingers through to make a mess. That’s fine. 

Before she goes, she takes a moment to kneel down on the floor in front of her altar. All her stuff is spread across a shitty thrift store coffee table, the wood worn down and covered in nicks and cup rings, but it does the job. She can sense the character when she puts her hands on it, feels the people who owned it before. Her thumbs dig into the edge of the table to hold on, over the same knots in the wood that she always uses. It anchors her there, the ritual of it. Being able to touch the grooves fills her with a sense of calm.

It’s a weird altar. Not perfect like Allura’s, not neat and coordinated. Allura’s even has a color scheme. But Keith’s serves her just fine. It took a long time to get the energy to feel right. It’s okay if it looks strange and messy.

But when you’re Keith, there’s not so much to choose from.

She’s got a set of antlers in the center, leaning against the wall beneath the window. Jackmanii vines twist and curl around them, reaching up to the sunlight. There’s a little cactus there, too, and some rocks that she borrowed from the desert. A cracked chunk of pink tourmaline and a trilobite fossil. These things remind her of home, remind her where she came from. She leans forward, gripping the edge of the table, and concentrates. _Home_.

It’s hard to know sometimes. Her memories are so small. There are pieces of her parents here, too, the only parts she has left, but sometimes it only begs more questions. Her dad’s wedding ring, his driver’s license. It’s such a shitty photo of him; thank fuck it’s not the only one she has. It makes her laugh though. He looks so goofy in it. It’s a bad picture but it’s sort of how she remembers him. 

He wasn’t into any of this stuff. He didn’t live long enough to denounce it—Keith didn’t get into it, herself, until way later—but he was so… normal. So unworried. Whatever the thing is, the esoteric core in her, it didn’t come from him.

Anyone else would think her altar was a junk heap, but she knows what each piece means. Most days it feels like a cosmic joke that the only things she has of her mother’s are the Blade and the fucking Police cassette. Synchronicity from 1983. Her dad used to play it in the car all the time and tell Keith how her mom used to listen to it over and over. She doesn’t even have a tape deck anymore, but streams the album now and then as if it’ll give her answers. Usually it just leaves her even more confused. 

The Blade is sort of the centerpiece of the altar, though. Archaic thing that twinges in Keith’s pelvis every time she looks at it. Obsidian with a tanzanite rune glowing in the handle. She’d carved the rune into the center of the table, not even sure what it means. It isn’t in any of the books. One day she’ll ask Allura, but she’s been too afraid, not sure if she’s ready to know. The Blade lives here on the altar, right on the carving, any time she’s home. It stays with her when she’s out. There’s always a moment to say a little prayer to it as she comes and goes, to thank her mother.

_I’m lost, Mom_ , she thinks. There’s a photo of her parents on the wall behind the altar, and she stares up at it for a moment. It’s from their wedding day. It’s the only photo she has of them, the only one of her mother. Traumatized children don’t have the sense to take the photo albums, but the social worker had grabbed it off the wall for her on the way out. 

Sometimes when she stares at it, she thinks the photo moves. She can see them smiling. Sometimes her mother looks right at her.

She cracks her neck and tries to shake off the reverie. Says her usual tributes, with the sarcastic reminder to Whomstever that she could use some prosperity. Even with the tribute from last night, it’s instinct at this point from begging every night. 

Some nights, she tries to apologize for the things she’s about to do. The feedings. She hasn’t told Allura about those, either, although she suspects Allura might know already. It’s hard to know if what she’s doing is wrong, if these people deserve privacy and consent. But it isn’t something that Keith chose, and she doesn’t know how to talk about it, even in this quiet space. She bows her head and breathes on it, hopes that’s enough, and then she’s getting up to leave.

Tuesday is New Wave night at the goth club. She likes the goth club better. The people are nicer, the music is cooler. It can also draw a crowd on a Tuesday night of all the weirdos who give a fuck about their scene.

No one ever gives her shit about the Blade in the inside pocket of her jacket; she sort of commands them not to, even though she can’t explain how she does it. But she hands her coat off once she steps down into the basement club, and the music is already so loud and there’s the sugary smell of booze and fake smoke and even without feeding yet it already feels better. 

The bar is set against the hallway wall on the way back to the danceroom, squashed in and narrow and she can feel the energy already, around her in a cloud. Normally she tries to go in sober, and normally it’s a financial decision, but _five hundred fucking dollars_ are whispering to her from her debit card and she wiggles into place at the bar first. She fishes her card from her wallet and asks to open a tab. 

There’s a bank of TV’s over the bar, all playing the same music video. Stripped by Depeche Mode, playing slightly off-sync from the feed cranking through the club. She leans her elbows on the bar and watches it as she does a warmup shot, then takes her time with a dark ’n stormy. She chews on the end of the straw, probably drinking it too fast, staring up at the TVs. The cold hitting her stomach brings back some of the mental acuity, washes off the anxiety in a way that the shower hadn’t. She finishes it a couple minutes into the next video and tips the bartender before slinking off to the back, hoping to get there before the booze kicks in.

Her lips are numb when she gets to the center of the room.

Being drunk makes it easier to dance though, she can admit that much. It always feels a little ridiculous before she can get into the groove of it, but this time it feels so natural. She closes her eyes and raises her arms above her head, rocking her hips back and forth. True Faith by New Order comes on and she thinks if her eyes were open she’d start to cry. 

The colors fade in around her. The energy comes towards her in wispy strands, and they wrap around her body as she dances. It burns through her when she breathes, but it’s a good burn. Warm and safe. It eases the burden, restores her energy. The power mixes nicely with the alcohol, and she feels like she’s floating, peaceful and breezy. It's so out of character, she thinks, wouldn’t have been possible if she were sober, but… 

She’s allowed to have this. This happiness, just for a short while, with no one here to hold it against her.

But something aches in her head, rings in her ears beneath the music, and she knows she’s being _watched_.

Her arms twist above her head, languid but graceful, and she turns in a circle, eyes still closed. The colors of everyone’s auras blend all around her, and she tries to pinpoint which one of them is staring so hard. 

It’s there for a quick flash, a cold spot, drawing her in for just a moment before it collapses on itself. A black fucking hole in the room. Even the tiny glimpse felt _powerful_. Huge.

Keith’s eyes snap open and her arms drop to her sides. She turns frantically, trying to see the people around her, but it’s too dark. The strobe lights make everyone seem ghoulish and threatening. Fog machine smoke hangs in the air, making everything hazy and surreal, too obscured. 

And this… _thing_ , this cold spot. It’s disappeared, it’s hiding, but she can still feel the eyes on her. Her skin crawls and she begins to push through the crowd, trying to appear calm and not make a scene as she weaves her way back out to the bar. She runs her hands through her hair and tries to act like nothing is wrong as she goes to get her card back and close her tab.

“Someone paid it for you,” the bartender says, handing Keith the card without a receipt, and she’s staggering backwards to go get her coat.

The world is spinning, the streetlights making little halos and she hurries off. The weight of the Blade in the inside pocket is the only thing keeping her from screaming. She squeezes around her phone and wonders if she should get a Lyft, but thinks it’s better to stay moving, to not wait in one spot for the car to get there. She wonders if she should call Allura.

Too drunk for this, that was maybe a mistake.

But it keeps her warm, keeps her loose. It puts her powers into soft focus but she feels calmer as she gets closer to home, even slows her pace a little.

The neighborhood is all decked out for Halloween, less than a week away. Some of the houses have their jack-o’-lanterns lit already, cheerily out on the front steps, and it makes her smile. Amidst all the drama she reminds herself to get some pumpkins; hasn’t gotten around to it yet.

Her feet are numb as she finally gets home, taking the steps two at a time and checking over her shoulder as she unlocks the door. The feeling is gone, no longer an immediate threat, but she senses it hovering out there somewhere, waiting for her.

Double-locks, wiggles the doorknob to make sure, slides the chain into place. She checks through the peephole as she whispers the protection incantation, refreshing it again. 

Everything is still spinning, the room bouncing back and forth as she pulls off her boots and trudges through the apartment. Clothes are still all over the floor and she just adds to them, pulls the Blade from her jacket before tossing it over a chair, hopping out of her pants as she enters her room.

The abrupt halt makes her socks slide on the wood floors, and even with the spins she zeroes in on the altar. Not how she left it.

“The fuck…” her mouth is dry and she swallows hard, still tasting the booze. Her hand aches where she squeezes around the hilt of the Blade. She looks towards the window, then over her shoulder, looks for the near-invisible waves of energy protecting the apartment. Not her best work, but it usually does the job. She wonders if it’s weaker when she’s not home.

Eupheme meows at her, in a perfect catloaf beneath the altar table. She doesn’t seem distressed, more like she’s calling Keith’s attention to it, as if it wasn’t the first fucking thing she saw when she came in.

It’s confusing.

She gets the sense again, like last night, that maybe this thing is not a threat. Eupheme seems perfectly relaxed, unthreatened. They didn’t leave any lingering traces of evil in the air. That must mean something.

Still, she grips around the handle of the Blade, prepared to use it as she approaches the table. The rune on the Blade glows as if in response to this… _gift_ , taking up its place on the altar. She stares for a moment, as if it will make more sense, but nothing does.

_The Moon is your way out_ , she’d said last night, and it echoes inside her head.

Money again, right in the middle of the altar, in the middle of her apartment. She’s afraid to touch it, doesn’t want to count it, but it’s thick, folded neatly into a silver bill clip. Even the bill clip looks expensive, fuck.

There’s a fleeting moment where she wants to call Allura again, to ask for help. Her mind races ahead and wonders if she’d be safer at the shop, imagines sneaking in and sleeping upstairs, even without the courage to ask for help. She makes the whole plan right there on the spot, imagines herself sneaking out in the morning, once the sun is up, before anyone has to know.

But even the best of them rely on the modern world, she realizes. Allura would have the security log, would know that Keith disarmed the alarm to come inside. The cool rationality of it forces her to slow down. 

“Okay,” she says out loud. She turns a circle in the room, checks to see the energy over the windows again. “You got me. You got in my house. Great job. Congratafuckulations.”

Eupheme stands and stretches, utterly relaxed, and hops into Keith’s bed, watching like she always does at bed time, waiting for Keith to join her. Keith rubs her temples. 

“Fine, fine,” she mumbles. She brandishes the Blade, “I’m keeping this, though.”

She can’t remember the last time, if ever, she’s slept without her mother’s Blade where it belongs, the center of the power on her altar, the source of it, the defender of it. But keeping it under her pillow tonight will serve her better.

**WEDNESDAY**

* * *

She spends her shift at Allura’s fully engaged in homework with the hopes that it will obstruct any of her real thoughts about what’s going on, not ready to invite any scrutiny on the subject. If Allura suspects anything she keeps it to herself, just brings her clients upstairs and leaves it be. Keith chews on the end of a highlighter and throws herself into the chapter reading, marking all the parts that she knows she’ll forget. 

At some point she writes a pathetic email to her professor to apologize for skipping out last night, makes up an excuse that she fell ill, then silences her phone for a while because she’s too embarrassed to read the reply.

Allura finishes early, and the extra boost of energy from last night gives Keith the strength to smile and nod through the small talk, to pretend to be normal long enough to finish up her shift. She pulls a knit cap down over her ears for the walk home to keep away the chill, still not used to the weather up in the mountains. It’s just past sunset but it feels like the neighborhood is waking up all around her as she passes through, lights coming on, pumpkins lit. There’s a chimney going somewhere. 

It puts a certain charge into the air, something that makes her power want to come out and play. Even as a little kid, before her powers had manifested, she’d loved this time of year. Way back, when her dad was still around. He used to make it really special, said it was her mom’s favorite holiday. 

Maybe it’s not a coincidence that all this nonsense is happening this week. Full moon on Halloween and everything. Maybe other things are coming out to play, too.

Making excuses like that makes it feel more normal, makes her relax a little bit. Maybe it wouldn’t kill her to live a little and enjoy the holiday mischief. 

But being unsettled about this stuff is natural. It’s smart. It’s what she’s thinking as she heads up the steps to her apartment and sees the packages outside her door.

At least they didn’t break in this time.

She looks around before approaching, but doesn’t feel watched. 

It looks like… a pumpkin? And two huge grocery bags. The fuck?

There’s a receipt stapled to one of the bags; it’s a delivery service, which is… maybe less weird? She’s not sure. The time stamp shows the order being placed in the middle of the night and filled a few hours ago, mid-afternoon.

She drags them inside and drops them onto the kitchen counter, staring for a moment, not sure she’s ready to open them. Needs a minute. She goes into her room and the money is still on the altar, and she ignores it as she packs a bowl and takes a few hits to chill out, then tries again.

Ginger beer, and cat treats, and Halloween candies, and the coffee she likes. It gives her the chills; she wonders if they looked around her apartment last night, if they knew what she needed. 

And it’s… weird. It pushes a boundary, violates a social construct. Keith leans against the counter and holds one of the candies in her hand, not sure if she should eat it. It’s odd, playing by the rules with social constructs. She doesn’t get them half the time, just recognizes them because she’s been taught to. In a sense, feeling violated is a scripted response, one she’s not truly feeling.

She unwraps the candy and bites into it.

This seems friendly, to be honest.

She goes back to the altar and picks up the cash, turns it over in her hands. The bill clip has intricate designs, a detailed koi fish on one side and kanji on the other that Keith can’t read. She traces over it with her fingers, feeling all the lines and bumps. It’s an antique, for sure, but Keith can’t get a feel for how old it is. Too many hands have touched it. 

But enough with this bullshit.

She sits down in front of the altar, bowing her head and asking for her mother’s protection. Not sure what she’s about to do, really, not sure what she’s even asking for, but she’ll take any help she can get. She pockets one of her crystals and orders a ride on her phone, eats another piece of candy while she waits at the window.

The driver doesn’t try to speak to her when they show up. Probably thinks she’s a total creep, and they’re not completely wrong. They probably don’t get fares asking to get dropped off on the side of a dark mountain road. 

“Are you sure?” the driver asks, and Keith can feel their apprehension permeating the inside of the car. She just says thank you and heads out, already off the road and under cover of the trees when they finally give up and pull away.

She hasn’t been out here in a while. Doesn’t make a habit of it. But she knows this place is here, can feel it pulling to her. 

The moon is getting bright, just a few nights out from full, and it lights her path through the trees. It’s not really a path, that’s the thing. She has to be careful, stepping through the underbrush. But her soul is telling her where to go.

People were executed up here, in the mountains. Their blood fed the soil. They’ve soaked deep into the earth, grown through the roots of the trees. She can feel them all around her, singing out her core. It’s why she’s chosen this place, knowing they can amplify her voice. She can absorb their power into herself. They’re conductive, intoxicating. 

Their energy is more potent than the living, but they’re aware of her. She can’t feed off them the way she can with humans. Humans are petty, they don’t notice. They take their life-force for granted. But the dead…

It gets foggy as she ascends the mountain. She passes the usual landmarks; the boulder shaped like a buffalo, the small murky tarn, the mouth of the cave. The presences of ghosts gets thicker and the living go quiet. Not so many birds up here, and she isn’t hearing the other animals. She thinks the spirits frighten them away.

She’s sweating despite the chilly mountain air as she finally breaks into the clearing at the top. Her feet are cold, bottoms of her pantlegs are damp, body tense as her arms stay pinned across her chest for the warmth. She sniffles and rubs her nose as she looks up at the moon.

The mist is clinging to the ground, but the sky is clear. The moon bathes her in clean white light. Her teeth chatter as she moves towards the middle of the clearing, watching where the ground turns to stone. She sits down, cross-legged, and pulls the crystal out of her pocket.

It’s heavy, amethyst, rough around the edges. She likes the way it digs into the palms of her hands in different spots; it keeps her tethered to the real world. It gleams in the moonlight, but begins to glow from within, as well, and the energy flutters in her hands. It blends upwards, through her wrists, to her shoulders, her head, her heart. The wind picks up, howls down the side of the mountain, cuts cold into the collar of her jacket.

There aren’t words she can say, really. It’s not like that. But she feels the power drawing in through the amethyst, feels the spirits of the forest arriving, amplifying her needs. No words, just intentions, sending them into the air around her.

_Come to me_ , her intentions say. 

It prickles in a line from the crown of her head down to her feet, pulses gently. The spirits here are vivid, needy. There’s pain but there’s gratitude, and she feels the feedback loop between herself and the souls here. They are a nebulous mass, distinct creatures forming one entity, and if she stays too long they’ll pull her into their orbit and she won’t be able to leave.

“Come to me,” she whispers out loud, and her breath hangs in the air in front of her face.

There’s a crackle in the distance, the snapping of a tree, she thinks. She imagines it in her head, the trunk splintering and falling. She turns towards the sound and sees a figure in the mist. 

The wind stops.

It’s a silhouette from here, at the end of the trees, and Keith freezes until it moves. She shoves the amethyst into her pocket and feels for the Blade strapped to her hip, scrambles up to her feet as it approaches.

Curvy figure, hooded cape, in all black so that even as it steps into the moonlight it’s still obscured. Keith swallows hard and squeezes the handle of the Blade, feels the rune pulse against her hand.

But even without seeing the face, Keith knows it’s a woman, can feel the energy radiating from her. It doesn’t feel like human energy—not warm and vital—it’s… the cold spot in the room, vast like the night sky. Potent like the dead. 

Keith plants her heel hard against the stone beneath her, prepared to stand her ground, trying to feel bigger, but as the lady gets closer Keith can sense that she’s _tall_. She shivers and her heart pounds in her ears.

“Who are you?” she asks, as the woman gets close. “ _What_ are you?”

A pale white hand emerges from beneath the cape, long elegant fingers with nails that shine in the moonlight like glass. Keith sees it in slow motion as the woman stops and pulls the hood back from her face.

“Keith,” she breathes. Her voice is so quiet, but Keith hears it everywhere, like it was whispered in her ear. Her knees lock and she feels like she should run, but can’t move. _Her eyes…_ huge and stormy grey, blazing with curiosity. There’s a tiny smile playing on her lips, and there’s a flash where Keith can see her _teeth_ , pointy like a wolf. “I’m like you.”

The spirits in her surge, and she gasps for breath, grabs at her chest, feels like she might burst. They scream in warning and it rings in her ears, throbs in the back of her head. The amethyst burns in her pocket and she can swear she feels it crack in half.

And there’s nothing after that.

It’s the starry sky, and a freezing cold hand on the back of her neck, mysterious language sung to her. And _those teeth_. And heat, pleasure, hunger. 

No common thread strings them together, nothing that can explain, shards of memories that she’ll agonize over. 

But she wakes in her bed, with the sun in her face, Blade beneath her pillow and cat by her hip. Her whole apartment smells like incense and oils, just like always, and she rubs at the side of her throat.

She sits up, takes stock. The same t-shirt she had yesterday, but her jeans are folded neatly on top of her dresser. Jacket hanging up on the back of the closet door. Just her t-shirt and boyshorts, like how she always sleeps.

A sickness is creeping in, unsure what to make of all of it. Heart pounds as she thinks she needs to tell Allura. Tell her everything. She’ll know what to do.

Keith pinches the bridge of her nose and takes a deep breath, then pushes her bangs out of her face. Her phone had been in her jacket pocket, but it’s plugged in, peacefully sitting on her night stand. Her hands are shaking as she reaches for it.

But the notification is hovering there on the screen and it erases the motivation to do the right thing.

Another Ko-fi, but this time…

“What are you?” she whispers.

**THURSDAY**

* * *

She stays awake long enough to feed the cat and email her professors to say she’s sick, then goes back to bed. She has no idea what time she went out last night, and less of an idea when she got back. But she’s so fucking _tired_ , absolutely drained. 

The apartment is so drafty, it’s getting so cold out. She puts on warmer clothes, soft comfy stuff, and grabs an extra blanket. It feels like forever since she’s _slept_ like this, and it feels good. She sleeps and doesn’t dream, wakes up here and there to pee and check her phone, but flops back into bed. Allura doesn’t need her today, which is good. Gives her space to sort her shit out. It’s been a long time since she let herself do nothing like this.

Last night should be frightening her more, she thinks. She keeps replaying it in her head, smushing her face into the pillow and closing her eyes to get more focus. The memories are hard to catch, seem to escape her right as they come into focus, teasing and elusive. She remembers… a woman. Remembers her eyes. And feeling those eyes on her had been…

Familiar.

She groans and rolls onto her back, stares up at the ceiling. 

_S_ , this woman calls herself. Keith knows it’s her, could feel the connection flaring back to life in those few moments together. Felt it in her soul. The leftover energy shimmers through her body and she feels it flooding heat up the insides of her thighs. 

There had been such a sense of _power_. Magnetic pull of _danger_. But she hadn’t felt unsafe. She can’t explain, feeling the instinct that she was in the presence of a predator, but also knowing, truly and deeply, that S wouldn’t hurt her.

Her heart skips and she feels the idea of it between her legs. She sucks on her lip ring.

She doesn’t remember S’s face, just her figure. The cut of her clothes accenting her hips, subtle pear shape. The elegant fingers. She must have seen more than that, but can’t remember. Just the eyes. _The eyes_.

There’s a moment where she hesitates, feeling silly for getting turned on, but she sighs in frustration with herself as she slips her hand beneath the pajama pants, rubbing her labia for a moment through the fabric of her underwear. She’s starting to throb, just thinking about it, skin warm already. 

Teeth like a wolf.

She closes her eyes as she goes for it, unable to help herself, really. Breath shaky as she reaches into her underwear, feels out the shape of her clit.

The way her nerves sing feel like how the power did last night, expanding outward, lighting up her core. She tries so hard to remember S’s face but can only see her eyes, and picturing them gives her that same feeling of being small. It puts her back on the mountain again, in the shadow of this creature, locked into her gaze. Depthless eyes, unknowable. 

_I’m like you_.

Her heart pounds and she turns her head, presses into the pillow, can’t help moaning into her empty apartment. The vice grip of that cold hand, the strength in it. _The teeth_.

She presses her knees together as she comes, reaches down to slip her fingers inside. So fucking wet, and warm, and there’s an aftershock as she pictures the cold hands touching her.

“Fuck,” she sighs. 

The sun is starting to go down by the time she finally gets out of bed. And she’s not feeling as worn out as she’s felt all week; the extra energy has helped, she’s not feeling as anxious. More confused than anything. Accepting that she’s sorta horny. 

She calls to order dinner, takes a shower while she waits for the delivery. Slides a bill out of the money clip to pay for it. 

Hot food is so underrated.

She squashes herself into the corner of the couch to eat, the cat on her feet, and her body just _knows_ she’s been malnourished for days. And even indirectly, feeling like S bought it for her… feels sort of nice. 

Keith doesn’t date that often. She’s too prickly, she thinks. Impatient, guarded. Hasn’t gotten the script down yet. And she probably won’t ever admit this out loud, but she thinks it feels nice, being cared for. She thinks she likes it.

The food and the orgasm and the energy and the rest has her feeling so recharged, so ready. She feeds the cat and gets dressed, sits down at the kitchen table with her laptop. 

Her bank account is open in one tab and her student portal in another. She eats another Halloween candy.

Honestly, she hadn’t thought she’d make it. She was trying not to freak out about it, but had been silently making plans in her head for if she had to drop out or surrender the credits. She’s so close to being finished, too, one more semester. And she can worry about next semester later. But something tells her it isn’t going to be a problem.

She toggles back and forth between the tabs a few times, trying to convince herself she’s not hallucinating, and her heart is actually racing when she clicks to pay the balance.

The page refreshes and the _$0 Remaining_ in huge blue letters is burning into her eyes. 

Doesn’t feel real.

She slams her hands down on the table and pushes her chair back, stands up and grabs her jacket. Grabs the Blade, her wallet, her phone. One of the broken halves of her amethyst. All that money and there’s still left over for rent, for food. It’s never been like this. She splurges on a Lyft to the club. 

Vinyl night on Thursdays, and she can hear Aesthetic Perfection cranking from out in the street. She rolls the amethyst in her hand, in her pocket, as she comes down the stairs and enters into the dark danceroom. 

Maybe if she tries it in public, S won’t run away this time.

This type of music is better for feeding, she thinks. People go harder, their hearts pump more. The crowd is a little younger. She takes her place amongst them, squeezing around the amethyst, swaying between them as she closes her eyes, tilts her head back. 

_Come to me_.

Her eyes don’t open but she feels when S enters the room. She comes closer, and it’s a shimmering spot, purple black and full of magic. The other colors are so dull beside it, until Keith can’t see them at all.

“Keith,” her voice says. And Keith opens her eyes. “You found me.”

Nothing in the room matters for a moment. She doesn’t hear the music, doesn’t sense the other people. She thinks she moans as her breath comes out.

“You’re beautiful,” Keith says. If it were anyone else, they’d be pressed close to each other, shouting in each other’s ears over the music, but Keith knows she can hear. 

S’s skin is so pale but her cheeks dust over in pink and she ducks her head. 

_Shiro_ , the name rings in her head. A chill runs down her spine.

“Shiro,” she repeats, out loud, and Shiro looks up, meets her gaze again. “Your name is Shiro.”

“My name is Shiro,” she says. _Shi-ro_ , all breathy and quiet, her teeth showing for a moment as her lips shape around it. She meets Keith’s eyes again and Keith can’t move, then steps closer and puts a hand on Keith’s hip. Her grip squeezes in and out, coaxing Keith to start dancing again. Keith hadn’t realized she’d stopped. “I like watching you dance.”

As they move together some of her vision comes back to normal, able to see more of Shiro’s face. There’s a faded scar across the bridge of her nose that Keith hadn’t even noticed last night. Old and silvery, flushed neatly to her skin with age. No makeup but thick lashes, high cheekbones like a model. Sharp jawline. Keith reaches to touch her hair, silky black with strands of white curling through fron the front. She’s beautiful. 

She leans her forearms on Shiro’s shoulders, links her fingers loosely behind her head. This close, she has to tip her head back to see Shiro’s face. She’s so tall.

“Yes,” Shiro says, and it chills Keith that Shiro knew what she was thinking, “that’s why they chose me.”

The music is so loud and fast around them, fading in and out of Keith’s attention. Psyclon Nine and Grendel and Suicide Commando, that type of stuff. People bump into them as they move, stomping around and moving their hands, but Keith and Shiro are such an island among them, so languid. Her heart races and it aches between her legs. She closes her eyes and leans her forehead to Shiro’s collarbone, and the aura envelops her.

“You feel different,” she says, and it’s muffled against Shiro’s sweater but she knows Shiro can hear her just fine. “Your energy is different.”

Shiro rubs up and down Keith’s lower back but doesn’t answer. Keith breathes into her clothes; she smells like woodsmoke and dead leaves, and she shudders against Shiro’s body.

“What did you mean, that you were like me?” The music is loud enough to vibrate the floor under their feet, but she barely hears it. The bass reverberates in her breast bone.

Shiro presses in close, tilts her head to speak into Keith’s ear. Her breath is cold, it gives Keith goosebumps. “You _prey_ on them.”

Adrenaline stabs through her sides and she tries to recoil, to see Shiro’s face, to defend herself, but Shiro’s arm around her waist cages her in. Shiro nuzzles into Keith’s hair and her teeth graze across the outside of her ear. 

“Oh, darling, but you do,” she says. “You can call it whatever you’d like. But you prey.”

“I don’t,” she says, into Shiro’s shirt, but clings to her and pulls in closer. “I don’t.”

“Show me,” Shiro says. “You never have to hide from me, Keith.”

She shudders and keeps her face hidden, trying to sense the auras of the humans around them, through the haze of Shiro’s presence. It’s almost overpowering. But, fuck. Her body wants it, even when she doesn’t even need it right now. Fucking wants it, just from thinking about it. 

“I can’t,” she whimpers.

Shiro pets Keith’s back again, patiently, maybe condescending, but she sweeps down to slide her fingers into Keith’s back pocket, to palm her over her ass. “Would you like to know a secret, Keith?”

The music is so loud. Keith nods.

_I prey on people, too._

The words shoot right to Keith’s cunt and she rolls her hips forward without meaning to, grinds against Shiro’s leg. 

“Show me,” Shiro says again, her voice so gentle, and it’s commanding but it’s also curious, playful. Keith takes a deep breath and lifts her head, takes half a step back for space to move. The music thuds along with the blood in her ears, and she holds Shiro’s shoulders loosely as she lets her head tilt back, as she picks up the pace of her dancing. 

Shiro’s presence is strong, surrounding them in a mist, but Keith breathes deep and tries to see past it. To find the others. And the other colors pulse back to life, weave into her space. Tiny little shocks all over her body as she breathes it in, as it enters her pores. Good shocks, stimulating. 

“I can feel you, too,” Keith whispers. Shiro drags her fingernails up Keith’s side, dipping beneath the hem of her shirt, just a tease. “You’re so much stronger than they are.”

“So prey on me, instead.”

It happens in a flash, the way Shiro mixes with others and blocks them out. It hits Keith in a blast and she squeezes in close again, hugs her arms tight around Shiro’s neck. For a moment she can’t control her body, muscles going off in short spasms. It feels like a fucking orgasm. She cries out but knows the humans can’t hear her, and before she can hide against Shiro’s shirt again, Shiro leans in to kiss her.

It’s cold.

The sensation of it is so strange, so alarming. There’s a deep instinct, and she’s not sure if it’s her human half or the core inside, telling her that this creature is _dangerous_. That she’s _unnatural._ Her skin is so soft on the outside, but Keith can feel how hard her body is, how rigid with ethereal strength. Her hand comes up to cup Keith’s jaw, nails tracing lightly behind her ear as it deepens, as Keith shakes in her embrace. 

But those teeth…

She pulls away with a gasp, head spinning, senses on fire. Shiro’s skin is so clearly inhuman in the strobe flashes and Keith looks around, amazed that no one else is seeing this. And she can see so clearly now, even in the darkness. So much detail. Vivid colors and the tiny lines of people’s faces. 

“Can we get out of here?” she begs, practically gasping, and Shiro stares down at her calmly, studying her for a moment, before nodding and leading her away.

As a general rule, Keith prides herself on being independent, on taking care of herself. It’s always been that way, it had to be. But she feels like she can’t speak, doesn’t know how to protest as Shiro holds her hand and guides her through the people. Usually Keith is the one who leads. It’s all backwards, but the way she falls in line is so soothing. No one’s ever tried to care for her.

Shiro knows where she lives, and she wonders if she’ll bring her home, but they’re only a block away and Shiro is taking her inside a late-night diner. It’s such a sensory overload—the noise of the club, then the cold night air, then the sticky warmth of the restaurant. Keith’s head is spinning, even though she didn’t drink tonight—Shiro’s energy inside her body is so overstimulating. 

_Can we get out of here?_ had been code for _You’re making me so fucking horny can we please go somewhere to fuck?_ but maybe it didn’t translate so well between species. Her insides are churning, frustrated, but she doesn’t argue as Shiro brings them to a corner booth and orders her a coffee. What a bonerkiller. 

“You’re hungry,” Shiro says. She looks even more unnatural in the ugly fluorescent light. Not in a bad way. It gives Keith dirty thoughts. _I want you to crush me_ , etc. But she’s shocked that no one is staring. Shiro smiles at her, a subtle smile that hides her teeth. “People don’t notice what they don’t want to notice.”

Keith shivers.

“Do you want them to notice?” Shiro asks. Keith can actually hear her voice now, really hear it with her ears, not the psychic illusion from before. Her voice is smoky and deep, but… so normal. Soft and polite. 

She looks around the diner at the other patrons. And she doesn't fear for her safety, really. Especially not with Shiro here, but… “No,” she answers. This seems private, something she wants to keep to herself. Something special.

The waiter brings Keith’s coffee, and Shiro hands him the menus as she orders pumpkin pie with a side of mashed potatoes. A glass of water for herself. Weird, but okay. Keith opens her mouth to speak up, but nothing comes out. 

No one’s ever ordered for her before. The instinct is to feel defensive, to speak up for herself, but the cool look in Shiro’s eyes shuts her up. 

“You should eat,” Shiro says. 

Keith smirks and grabs for the sugar to mix into her coffee. “Didn’t know potatoes and pumpkin pie went together.”

“The menu says it’s seasonal.”

“Why didn’t you order it for yourself?”

Shiro doesn’t answer, just keeps staring.

The high from the club is calming down and Keith sips her coffee, watching Shiro carefully. She doesn't think Shiro has blinked at all, this whole time. Her leg is bouncing under the table, not sure what she’s supposed to be doing. What type of small talk are you supposed to make in this situation? 

Shiro props her elbow on the table and leans her chin in her hand. Staring. “You dress like a boy.” 

Keith chokes on her coffee.

“Uh? Sure?”

“It’s nice,” Shiro says, like it’s no big deal. “Women couldn’t do that when I was alive.”

“Right…”

The lights flicker overhead and Keith picks at one of her cuticles. It’s odd, all of a sudden, being so mundane. Makes her think she rushed into this, unsure what she’s doing. It’s different, experiencing this in the light, and she’s not sure what she expected, or what she wants, and…

“Your heart is beating very fast, Keith,” Shiro says. Keith holds her coffee mug up by her face like she can hide behind it.

“Uh, sorry.”

Shiro looks like she’s going to say something, but the waiter comes back with the food. They both thank him and Shiro pulls the glass of water towards herself but doesn’t drink it.

“Did you want the potatoes?” Keith asks, and fusses with her fork. 

Shiro’s fingers sweep stripes into the condensation on her glass. “They’re for you.”

… kay. 

“Do you like your pie?”she asks, and suddenly the food feels heavy in Keith’s mouth. It’s hard to swallow. But… yeah. She does. Shiro seems to know the answer already and looks delighted. 

“It’s good. Thanks.”

Keith eats slowly, still tapping her foot under the table. She keeps looking out the window, watching the cars outside. She recognizes some of the people from the club as they head home. Shiro doesn’t speak, but watches, like she’s studying. Fucking awkward. Keith gets halfway through before she puts her fork down in frustration.

“Are you gonna eat something?”

“I never eat… food.”

The fuck.

“Look, sorry,” she pushes the plate away and sits back against the diner bench. “I’m just. I don’t know what’s going on. I don’t know what you want.”

Shiro closes her mouth in a tight line and twists the glass back and forth in her hand. And Keith doesn’t have to ask, but it clicks in her head; she knows Shiro isn’t going to drink it. She ordered it to blend in. Shiro raises an eyebrow and Keith feels like every thought in her head is on blast. 

“Did you still want to… go somewhere else?”

Keith throws her hands up. “Uh, sure? What is this?”

“We’ll talk, come,” she says. She reaches into her jacket and lays a pile of bills on the table, then stands and nods towards the door. She’s so tall, Keith wants to shrink down into the bench. But she wiggles out of the seat and stuffs her hands in her pockets, feels for the broken amethyst as they walk. 

It’s easier outside, in the dark. She wants to blow off steam and stomp home, but Shiro is walking so slowly. Fucking strolling. They’re halfway to Keith’s when she stops and grabs Shiro’s wrist. And it’s ridiculous, how strong she is, how she almost doesn’t budge. It churns in Keith’s stomach, the strength of this creature. That Shiro stops, that she turns to look into Keith’s face, is purely her own choice.

“Look, what is this?” Keith asks again.

She’s so pale she’s almost glowing in the dark, eyes pulsing dully with unnatural light. She stares, doesn’t blink, until Keith takes a step back.

“You’ve been fucking stalking me,” she says. “You came in my fucking apartment.”

Shiro rubs the back of her neck. Her eyebrows come together. She looks so sad that Keith actually feels like an asshole for a second, but she shakes it off.

“I…” her mouth stays open too long. Keith can see her fangs. And the illusion is gone, just like that. She seems uncertain, vulnerable. _Human_. Keith gets a sense of what she might have been like, before all of this. She still doesn’t know what Shiro even _is_ , but something tells her it wasn’t always this way. Shiro looks down at the ground. “I’m sorry. It’s been a long time.”

“A long time since what?”

The silence between them is steady and awkward, Shiro unmoving save for the breeze in her hair. Keith palms the amethyst again, concentrates to channel its energy. Her eyes stay open but she sees Shiro’s aura for a moment, hovering around her, and she draws it towards herself, sees how it wisps in her direction. 

It’s a flood of emotion, of information, as it hits her. She breathes deep, shaking, and lets out a little whimper without meaning to. 

Too much information to parse.

_Age_ , and lifetimes, and pain. Pain like Keith’s never known. And the loneliness, so deep that Keith can’t even sense where it ends. She bites her lip and steps back, completely overcome. The corners of her eyes sting but she forces herself not to cry.

Shiro’s expression is neutral when she lifts her head and meets Keith’s eyes again, but Keith feels the emotions anyway. Shiro steps towards her and she feels frozen in place, stuck in her gaze. _Her eyes_. It throbs in the back of her head.

“I’d like to care for you,” Shiro says. 

“But…” there’s something Keith wants to ask, but it fades out of her head. Her heart is pounding. Shiro reaches for her, slings her arm over Keith’s shoulders, and continues along the way. And Keith… goes with her. She feels so airy, floating, submissive. And the thing is that it doesn’t feel bad. She thinks she’s craving it. 

_You’re preying on me_ , she thinks, and Shiro squeezes her shoulder. _I’m not supposed to act like this_.

Shiro hesitates by Keith’s doorway as they get back to her apartment, examining the door frame as Keith hangs up her jacket. She tries to be subtle as she pulls the Blade from the inside pocket and tucks it into the waistband of her pants, at her back. She shakes her t-shirt out over it. It’s something she does without _thinking_ ; not actively thinking, doing her best to work on muscle memory without putting the words and images in her head. Shiro will know if she thinks about it too hard, that much she’s learned.

“Do you need to be invited in or something?” she asks. “You broke in just fine before.”

Shiro tilts her head and reaches her hand through the doorway, and Keith sees how the magic ripples in the air around her. “It’s only like this because you’re home.”

Keith raises an eyebrow and takes a step back to put more space between them. “If you’re not gonna hurt me you should be able to get through it.”

It’s strange, watching from here, stepping back into a safe place. Clears her head a little. Shiro looks at the floor, then the corners of the doorframe, marvel on her face. She’s smiling just enough for the fangs to show. 

And it’s hard to know if Keith wants it or not, can’t tell how much of the need is her own. How genuine it is. She feels the rune on her Blade, hot against her lower back, and asks for protection in her own home. Asks for clarity. No bullshit, no tricks. Asks her mother to protect her.

“No bullshit,” Shiro repeats with a nod. She grits her teeth as she steps inside, and there's a quick flash that she looks absolutely monstrous, but it settles once she’s inside. She turns and looks at the doorway again, in awe, and then shuts the door. 

“I’d show you around but you’ve been here already,” Keith says. Still, Shiro takes a moment to walk around the space, marveling at every little thing. Keith wonders how old she is, how long she’s been by herself, what she’s even seen of the modern world. Maybe she’s been tucked away somewhere, waiting for this moment. 

She touches one of Keith’s paper lanterns, then picks up a jar of animal teeth from the bookshelves, gives it a little rattle before touching all the buttons on her bluetooth speakers. The cat comes and sniffs at Shiro’s shoes, and she crouches down to pet her. She holds her by the jaw, gently, to stare into her face. And Keith has to admit, Eupheme’s complete sense of chill is a good sign.

“Enough,” Keith finally mumbles, and comes forward, grabs Shiro loosely around the bicep. She gets that sense again that Shiro is allowing this—her body is so hard, so dense, but she’s pliant as Keith guides them to the couch. Keith goes up on her toes to kiss the cool skin beneath Shiro’s jaw and touches her ribs, sweeps her hands up beneath Shiro’s jacket to push it away from her shoulders. 

Her clothes are so nice. Black and classic, somewhat timeless. Soft wool turtleneck. And Keith is pulling her jacket away when she notices Shiro’s right arm ends at her bicep. The sweater is perfectly tailored to it. 

“Oh,” she says, and freezes for a moment. Shiro takes it with grace, pets Keith’s cheek and slips out of her jacket herself. Puts it to the side. “Was that… like that this whole time?”

Shiro’s laughter is quiet and breathy. Barely there. “Yes.”

“I didn’t notice.” _How did I not notice?_

There’s a chaste kiss to the corner of her mouth. “People don’t notice what they don’t want to notice.”

She takes it in stride, really. Tucks her hair behind her ear and sits down on the couch, hooking a finger into Keith’s belt loop to pull her closer. 

And she’s distracted, but she checks in with herself again, makes sure she wants this. Feels for the protections in her apartment, makes sure she’s safe. Stares down at Shiro, tries to understand.

It’s almost infuriating how beautiful she is. How much Keith wants her.

She climbs into Shiro’s lap, straddling her, leaning in to kiss her. Cold still, but something about the _wrongness_ of it crackles through her body. She grinds her hips down, rolls herself slowly, cups Shiro’s jaw with both hands.

But she has to know.

She doesn’t think about it, taps into her muscle memory as she grabs the Blade and whips it forward, presses it to Shiro’s throat as she pulls away from the kiss.

“I’m not gonna ask you again,” she says, voice low. Shiro only looks startled for a moment, then just… sad. Her eyes are so big. “Why are you doing this to me?”

Shiro doesn’t swallow. She doesn’t breathe, doesn’t blink. Somehow, Keith isn’t even sure the Blade would do anything, isn’t sure what it would take to deal with a creature like this. 

“I’m like you,” she finally says.

“Yeah, yeah, you said that. What the fuck does that mean?" 

Shiro looks so lost, and their first conversation flickers in Keith’s mind. Her heart races.

“We talked about this, Shiro,” she says. “You were supposed to be honest. Be vulnerable. It’s the only way.”

A shadow passes through Shiro’s face and it’s like a switch being flipped. She sits forward and the Blade presses a bloodless white line into her skin.

“I’d like to prey on you, Keith.”

Keith leans back and thinks she might lose her balance, but Shiro catches her by the hip.

“I can hear your heartbeat. I know that you are aroused,” she says. She sits up into Keith’s space, and Keith can’t help go with the motion, even as she holds the Blade where it is. Shiro seems unbothered by it. She noses at Keith’s throat. “You smell good when you’re aroused.”

“Fuck…”

“I felt your soul calling to me, Keith, your power…”

She squeezes one hand on Shiro’s shoulder, holds on as Shiro lets her go. Shiro licks at the side of her throat as she reaches between Keith’s legs, palms over her zipper. It’s such a fucking tease. Keith moans as she leans into it.

“I’m just like you, Keith,” Shiro whispers, and Keith reaches down to pop the button on her jeans, to guide Shiro’s hand inside against her flesh. The cold makes her gasp but it’s part of the desire. And she’s in too much of a haze, out of arguments, unable to ask what the fuck that even means and not sure she even cares anymore. There are spots in her vision and she hears something crash in the next room.

Shiro strokes up and down between her folds and it’s a little awkward at this angle. Her body is so hard, and her fingers cold, and everything feels so uncomfortable, unforgiving, but Keith grinds in against her, desperate for it. Shiro’s fingers enter her, rubbing carefully as her thumb strokes back and forth over Keith’s hood. She shakes there, hand getting sweaty around the handle of her Blade. The cold mouth licking at the side of her throat gives her goosebumps.

Something reminds her that Shiro can hear her thoughts, and she writhes there, moaning in her lap. Shiro’s thick thighs flex beneath her as she rolls her hips, and there’s a light nibble on her earlobe. 

“You’re close,” Shiro tells her. It’s almost infuriating to hear, and the blood rushes to her face. Like, obviously she’s fucking close. Doesn’t need someone else to tell her. But she nods, desperately, hair falling into her face. And Shiro pulls back to smile at her. 

It isn’t abrupt when she stops, maybe that makes it worse. Her movements slow, and she draws back. Her fingers are slick as she brushes over Keith’s clit on the way out, pulling away until she squeezes around Keith’s thigh. Keith’s body is screaming, frustrated, orgasm ruined and she wants to yell about it but doesn’t even know what to say. Shiro looks so fucking smug.

“You didn’t thank me,” she says. 

Keith’s legs tremble and she starts to sink down, limp. Confused. “I—“

“We thank people who help us, no?”

“I—“ what the fuck.

Her adrenaline stabs into her sides and she drops the Blade as Shiro stands, holding Keith effortlessly with one arm. It happens so fast that her brain can’t make sense of it, but she scrambles to wrap her arms around Shiro’s shoulders out of instinct as she gasps.

“What are you doing?” she hisses.Shiro laughs softly and kisses the corner of her jaw. 

“I’d like you to touch yourself,” she says, and she’s bringing them into Keith’s room, laying her down on the bed. Keith sprawls across the blankets, shocked, unable to speak as Shiro slips her hand beneath Keith’s waistband and starts pulling her clothes away. She kneels between Keith’s legs, rubs up and down her thigh, pushes to spread her open. Keith isn’t sure if she’s embarrassed by the way Shiro stares; the shame and the arousal somehow go hand-in-hand. “You are so pink and alive here.”

She starts to sit up, propping up on one elbow as she reaches for the hem of Shiro’s sweater, fingertips grazing the cool skin beneath. But Shiro grabs her by the wrist, gives her a warning squeeze.

“No, Keith. Yourself.”

Keith sucks her lip ring for a moment, watching, wondering what she’s supposed to do. But the rebel in her kicks in and it feels like a challenge. She cocks an eyebrow and makes a lazy gesture towards the nightstand, wondering if Shiro can read the thought in her head. Shiro narrows her eyes for a moment as she considers it, and then the drawer opens on its own. Keith flinches at the sound, sort of shocked as Shiro reaches over and grabs the body wand.

“This will help you?” Shiro asks, and hands it to her. Keith doesn’t dignify her with a response, and her body is already tense as she flips it on. Too wound up from being denied earlier. She opens her legs wider as she presses it to herself, immediately shaky when it makes contact.

The look on Shiro’s face burns down to pure need, dark and ravenous as she watches. Her lips part and Keith moans at the sight of the fangs. She moves the wand up and down, body convulsing when it makes contact with her bare clit, and goes to feel her hole with her free hand. Gushing wet and slippery, and the penetration is a solid sensation to focus on, to balance the chaotic energy of the toy. Her knees start to close, on instinct, but Shiro’s hand digs into the meat of her right thigh. The pain of it adds to everything as she moans. 

“Yes, child,” Shiro whispers. She pushes Keith’s shirt up until it bunches under her armpits, touches her breasts like she’s appraising them. Pulls gently at her nipple ring until Keith whimpers. “Your blood smells so good.”

It’s ridiculous how close to the edge she is, laughable that this will take no time at all, but Shiro senses it again, that she’s close. Her grip is a cold vice on Keith’s forearm as she holds her back, the wand out of reach. Keith’s hip thrust upwards out of instinct for it, but Shiro holds it too far away.

“You didn’t thank me,” Shiro says again. And fuck, the way her voice goes straight to Keith’s cunt. She contracts around her own fingers. 

And it feels like a tease, like a game, but the gratitude floors her, out of nowhere. She shrinks beneath this woman, this _creature_ , and realizes that the last few days may have saved her life.

“ _Fuck_ ,” she whines, and she’s practically convulsing as Shiro lets her continue. “Thank you, thank you—“

Shiro’s hand wraps loosely around her own as she directs the wand, slowly up and down again. “Good girl.”

Her whole spine rolls through it as she comes, shoulders coming off the bed as she gasps through it. Shiro let go of her long enough to feel through the valley of her folds, gathering the slick, then pushes a finger in alongside Keith’s. The stretch feels bright and vivid, sharp and fresh and anchors her to her orgasm. 

Nothing makes sense for a few minutes as she comes down. There’s just enough presence to flip the wand off before her hand goes limp and she drops it to the side, heart pounding as she falls back against her bed. She keeps her other hand where it is, pressing into the swollen spot inside, needing the pressure there to see her through as she comes down. Shiro moves in her gently, her body picking up Keith’s heat until it isn’t so cold anymore.

“Thank you,” Keith whispers again. Her ears ring and she swallows hard, eventually pulls out. She rubs over her folds again, dripping wet and oversensitive, like she can blend out the sensation. Shiro pulls out as well, and she isn’t shy about the way she sucks the cum from her fingers. After a moment she pulls Keith’s shirt back down into place, puts the wand away, curls on her side and wraps her arm around Keith’s ribs. 

She can’t remember if another person has ever made her come that hard. Or, well. To be fair, she did most of the work herself. But still. Her ears are still ringing when she finally feels her heart going back to normal. She rubs up and down Shiro’s arm where it’s draped over her, then rolls on her side to face her. Reaches to touch her hip, sweeps up her side. 

“What about you?” she asks. Shiro smiles and kisses her on the forehead. Her eyes are stormy but she doesn’t say anything.

It feels weird, selfish, but Keith also doesn’t want to push it. Keeps her hands respectfully above the waist. Honestly, she’s too fucked out to make sense of it. Maybe she’ll push it another time. 

“I have to leave,” Shiro whispers, after a while. Keith isn’t sure how much time has gone by, slumped together like this, her body humming. She pulls in tighter, unselfconscious, clinging to the hard body. Shiro humors her for a few minutes but finally peels her arms back. She’s so fucking strong. Keith shudders as she rolls to the side and sprawls out on her back. 

Shiro stares at her for a moment before she stands and smooths her sweater down over her hips. 

“I can’t stay,” she says, and rubs a thumb across Keith’s bottom lip. “I’ll come back.”

Keith doesn’t want her to go, not after everything, but there are no words. Her brain is done for the night. But she believes Shiro, for some reason. Knows she’s telling the truth. She’ll come back.

So she nods, and there’s a sated, lazy smile as Shiro slips away. She practically disappears; Keith doesn’t even hear the door.

It takes a while to find the energy to move. She staggers into the bathroom to clean herself up, changes into pajamas. And she stands next to her bed, about to climb in and try to sleep, when she realizes something’s different about her altar.

She’d been too horny to worry about the crash she’d heard before, but she sees now. The wedding picture, on the floor. It isn’t broken, so that’s good. Landed face up, so that her parents are smiling at her. There’s a second where she swears it moves again; her dad laughing, her mom’s fringe blowing in the wind. 

Her feet drag against the floor as she heads over to pick it up, and she stares at it for a moment, wanting it to move again. She tilts it back and forth, as if it will help, the photo tinged with pale blue light coming through the window. 

Sunrise.

She shrugs and puts the photo down on the side of the altar, too tired to try to fix the wall mount right now. That’s a tomorrow problem.

Weird how it’s the same photo, this one moment from like thirty years ago, stuck there. The same expressions every time, but tonight they seem like they’re judging her.

She sighs.

“Sorry guys.”

**FRIDAY**

* * *

Sleep doesn’t come.

She rolls around in her bed, sheets tangled around her legs, and the stupid thing is that she’s not even all that exhausted. Shiro’s energy is coursing through her and she feels so alert.

It’s still early in the morning when she gives up, rouses herself enough to feed the cat and take a bath. The sunlight from the window feels so strange on her face as she lies there in the tub, and she lifts her hands to stare at them, to turn them back and forth in the light and study the color in her skin. Healthy, robust. _Pink and alive_. She pictures Shiro again, the deathly pallor, and imagines how it would look if they held hands.

Usually she feels weird the next day, after the clubs. After feeding. _Preying_. But Shiro’s energy feels so natural, so smooth. It comes with all the clarity and wellness and without the fucking hangover. Even so, feeling good, she needs time to process. Doesn’t want to be around people today. 

Allura’s gonna know something is wrong if she calls out, but she’ll know something is _different_ if she doesn’t. And Keith isn’t sure what it means, doesn’t feel ready to confront that. The idea of disappointing her is so frightening, but she wants to keep this new thing close to her heart as long as she can. Take a couple days to enjoy it.

She texts Allura when she’s done in the bath to tell her she can’t make it tonight. Even through text there’s a pang in her chest that Allura will know she’s lying. But it’s the best she can do for now. If Allura suspects anything she doesn’t say so and Keith doesn’t know if that’s good or bad. She chews her fingernail as she stares at the text screen for a moment, contemplating, but eventually puts it to rest. Moves on to emailing today’s professors. Somehow, the idea of her tuition being paid up takes so much of the pressure off, and she doesn’t know how she’s supposed to feel about that.

Shiro’s energy burns clean in her body, has a certain potency like the spirits in the forest. Keith paces her apartment and whispers incantations, feels the way Shiro’s power boosts her own. In the forest, and other places like it, the Dead feel so guarded, and working with them feels like she might lose a part of herself. They’re always ready to snap back, revoke their consent. But Shiro had given hers freely. It seems to make all the difference.

It feels so _healthy_. She’s not sure what it is. Focused and clear, and she wonders if this is how normal people operate. She pulls on just enough clothes to step outside and sweep the balcony, comes in and packs up her pending jewelry orders. The stones glow when she touches them, brighter than usual. 

Maybe it can be like this all the time.

She grabs her cards and sits on the floor in front of the coffee table, wondering how it’ll feel this time. She tries one of the go-to romance spreads she does with clients, even if it’s silly. The cards feel heavier than they should. She wonders if this thing with Shiro is a good idea, and spins the card in her hand a few times, not sure she wants to know, but finally places it down. 

Mother of Cups.

Probably a coincidence, but the drawing is the side profile of a swan, only showing her left wing. Keith rubs her thumb across the picture and thinks this is a good thing. Maybe there are no coincidences. 

Even as balanced as she’s feeling, the lack of sleep starts to catch up in the early afternoon. She takes the Mother of Cups card with her, props it on the nightstand next to her bed to stare at it. Sometimes it’s hard to preach to herself; she doesn’t feel the same assertiveness towards her own readings as she does for strangers... but she likes this. It bodes well. She even likes looking at the picture, and somehow it feels perfect.

She watches it until she dozes off. Dreams about a chalice full of stones. And she wakes to Shiro, cross-legged on her floor, watching her sleep.

It should be startling; every instinct that Keith’s ever known tells her she should be alert, she should jump back, she needs to protect herself, but the calm is instant and natural. It’s sappy as fuck but she thinks she likes waking up like this, seeing Shiro right away.

Is she supposed to say _Good morning_? She’s not sure. 

Instead she stretches and yawns. “I think my mom was mad at you.”

She reaches for Shiro’s hand and Shiro tilts her head as she accepts, as she curls their fingers together. Fuck, she’s freezing. Shiro’s eyebrows pinch together in apology and confusion and it’s so stupid that she’s this powerful and can look so sweet and sad. Keith can’t even tease her, it’s too mean.

“Maybe she thought you were going to prey on me,” Keith adds. “But you didn’t. Not really.”

Shiro runs her thumb across the back of Keith’s knuckles. “Did you want me to?”

Keith tugs her hand, scooting back from the edge of the bed to make space. And Shiro moves like water, graceful and inhuman. She slides into the bed and Keith leans in to kiss her on the mouth.

“What do you think?” Keith asks. She bites at Shiro’s bottom lip, feeling so small and bratty when she does it. A little puppy teasing a fucking wolf. But Shiro lets her, humors her. She pulls back, kisses Shiro’s cheek, the corner of her jaw, the space behind her ear. She traces Shiro’s bottom lip with her thumb, runs it back and forth until Shiro opens her mouth.

Keith pulls back to watch, sees the obedient way Shiro opens up. Cold and wet inside but she puts herself on display, lets Keith see the teeth. It shivers through her whole body. 

Shiro sucks on her thumb for a moment, then pulls away, kisses the palm of Keith’s hand. She stares into Keith’s eyes for a moment, bottomless and hard to read, and touches her throat, cold fingers tracing the shape of her pulse.

“You’re so cold,” Keith says. 

Shiro studies her for a moment. “You like it.”

_Yeah_. Yeah, she does, but she’s frozen there, not sure what to say. Bravado gone in an instant as Shiro stares right into her fucking soul like that.

Shiro leans in and kisses Keith’s throat, and Keith doesn’t think she needs to breathe or anything like that, but she seems to be inhaling against Keith’s skin, anyway. Smelling her.

What had she said last night? Some weird shit, like Keith smelled better when she was turned on.

“Yes,” Shiro confirms, lips dragging against Keith’s ear. The hair rises all over Keith’s body. And it’s so weird, feeling this exposed. Her heart races and she knows Shiro can hear it, knows exactly what’s happening. Shiro chuckles gently and confirms, again. “Yes.”

“Fuck…” Keith whispers. 

Shiro pulls away, props herself up on her elbow to stare down. Completely collected as she speaks. “Why don’t you take off your clothes, Keith?”

Normally that wouldn’t be so erotic, Keith doesn’t think. Seems a little awkward, clinical, but everything about this situation is unusual. She stares for a moment, mesmerized, and then scrambles out from under her blankets. Shiro smirks and fixes them as Keith stands to the side and pulls off her shirt, dropping it to the side, just standing there for a moment like she needs instructions. It’s so strange.

“Come here,” Shiro says. She sits to the side, gesturing for Keith to lie down. “I’d like to pleasure you.”

Keith has never had sex like this before. Not that she’s like, wildly experienced. A bit too picky for that. But, still. She’s not sure how much of the arousal is genuine and how much of it is just the _weirdness_ striking her, but the end result is the same. She kicks off her bottoms and crawls back onto the bed, lies back down, stares up at where Shiro is hovering over her.

“Did you want to prey on me?” Shiro asks. 

And fuck, yes, she does. Doesn’t even need it right now but wants to feel it anyway, wants to fill herself to the brim. Wants to overflow with it. 

Something holds her back though, some shred of guilt, like she’s being selfish. She tugs at the hem of Shiro’s shirt, the same way she’d done last night.

“What about you?” she asks again. 

Shiro gently pulls Keith’s hand away, pins it above her head. “No need,” she says, voice silky and deep. Keith shivers and lets her head fall back against her pillow, closes her eyes.

The energy is so close to her, floating all around. It’s all she can see, all she can feel. She begins to breathe it, feels how it connects to her brain, the signals that shoot through all her nerves. Her breathing is shaky and she squirms against her bed, Shiro kissing her ear and telling her she’s beautiful.

It startles her when Shiro touches her belly, hand cold, and she’s slow, exploratory, as she pets downward. Blunt nails drag across Keith’s navel, then her hair, and the way she gasps when the cold touches between her folds makes Shiro’s power crash into her.

“Fuck…” she whines. Shiro goes slow at first, testing her, sinking her fingers inside and drawing them out, over and over. Her fingers are wet when she pulls back to touch at Keith’s clit, safely over the hood. She kisses Keith’s throat as she rubs in circles. 

Her body tenses in some instinct of danger, artery pounding beneath Shiro’s lips, but Shiro travels downward. Licks at the jut of her clavicle, then sucks at her nipples. Kisses a line down her ribs. Keith’s eyes are still closed but the color stays close, all around her. She doesn’t see Shiro move, but feels the weight shift in the bed, feels her move between Keith’s knees. She moans and opens her legs wider.

Shiro’s fingers enter her again as she feels the cool mouth against her. Such an alien sensation but she gasps, grabs for Shiro’s hair. Her fingers rub deep, move quickly, focused and faster than a human could. Keith’s legs begin to tremble.

“Please, Shiro, fuck,” she moans.

There’s something very unsettling about Shiro's absolutely perfect pacing. Not so surprising, when Keith remembers Shiro can hear every thought in her fucking head. It makes sense that she knows exactly what Keith wants, how she wants it, when to stop, when to keep going. Such a contrast to some of her less impressive hookups in the past, where she had to awkwardly spell out the instructions. It made her so uncomfortable that it almost wasn’t worth it.

But Shiro’s got it. She massages inside Keith’s body as she sucks at her clit, knowing when to slow down, when to spread her fingers into a sharp little stretch, when to change the pace of her tongue. She sweeps over with long licks, tongue flat, and Keith arches her back, tangles her hands into Shiro’s hair.

“Fuck, yeah, that’s so good,” she says, and it just pours out of her. Not that awkwardness of _needing_ to speak during sex, but pulled from her. Her legs tremble and squeeze around Shiro’s shoulders as she screws her eyes shut. “You’re gonna make me fuckin come, fuck—“

Shiro hums in approval and it vibrates across Keith’s clit. She gasps as Shiro continues to lick over her, as her fingers press deep, exactly where Keith wants. She’s tracing a circle inside, rubbing her deep, fingers moving faster than a human would be able to. Keith almost screams but it only comes out as a squeak.

She sees Shiro’s energy as she’s about to come, starry and purple and all around her, and she can’t help that her labored breathing absorbs it in bigger waves. Her pussy contracts around Shiro’s fingers and she can tell she’s so fucking _wet_ , and she can imagine the energy in her as her body throbs. She pictures it, tangled around all the pleasure, snaking through her veins. And fuck, the way it _burns_ , but it feels good. Feels incredible.

There’s this feeling, as she comes down. Not like leaving her body but maybe the opposite. Drawing into herself, dead to the outside world, feeling her own existence as an island. But she can feel Shiro in her, around her, a cocoon. Like they’re infused with each other. 

At the clubs, with humans, it’s tiny pieces of each. She gets flashes of little things. What they did at work that day, something about a book they’re reading, a vivid stab of childhood memory. She’s never taken so much from a singular source before and her brain is overloaded with the information.

Some of it makes sense and some doesn’t. There are pictures sliced in. Sunny moments when she was alive, and it seems so completely foreign, so alien. Keith can’t even begin to imagine what year they’re from. And nighttime memories, too. Centuries of the moon. She thinks she recognizes the Romans, remembers learning about that in school. The _lions_. 

Shiro pulls away from her and kisses her belly, gently, peering up at her in fear. 

There’s emotion in there, too, though. The pain ripples in Keith’s chest as if it’s her own. And it’s more than just the loneliness she’s been sensing from Shiro, or the unfathomable years of grief. There’s also _hunger_. It’s deeper than any hunger Keith has ever felt. 

She touches Shiro’s jaw, feels her cool skin. 

“You’re starving,” she says.

Shiro gives her a tight smile and tries to look away, moves like she’s going to sit up and draw back, but Keith grabs onto her shoulders.

It’s in the images somewhere, takes all the ambiguity away. _I prey on people, too._ Keith hadn’t realized what the fuck that meant, but the visions are smoothing out, making sense. She can see it in her mind. Shiro, in the dark, beneath the moon, mouth full of blood. Century after century. 

“Please, Shiro, you can,” she says. Her body is still humming from the orgasm but she squirms at the thought of Shiro’s teeth, ready for another. “You can.”

Shiro looks so conflicted and human, almost delicate. It gives Keith this weird glimpse of what she might have been like when she was alive. She turns her head and kisses the inside of Keith’s wrist. “I don’t want to hurt you.”

“You won’t,” she says. “You can’t. My mother won’t allow it.”

Shiro ducks and presses her cheek to Keith’s soft inner thigh. Hesitating, or stalling,and her apprehension is an absolute cacophony in Keith’s head. She pets Shiro’s hair back, out of her eyes.

“Prey on me, baby.”

Shiro’s thumb presses into her thigh, rubs back and forth a few times. Something about it almost seems ritualistic, and Keith wonders if she’s gonna have to beg or something when it finally happens. Shiro’s hair falls around her in a curtain, obscuring the sight and giving her some semblance of privacy, but Keith can feel, she knows.

_Sharp_. And she can’t see, but can picture Shiro’s fucking _teeth_. She cries out, not sure if it’s pain or pleasure, and doesn’t even reach for her own clit on purpose. Doesn’t realize she’s doing it until she’s rubbing circles against it, still wet and oversensitive but _needing_ to. 

Her focus is torn between the pain in her leg and the shock of sexual energy. It fucking hurts but it feels good. Shiro’s lips move against her and she can feel everything, every detail of it, the flow of blood into Shiro’s mouth and the cold tongue tracing around the tiny wounds.

It isn’t just the orgasm coming on that’s making her dizzy—she can sense her own blood loss, feels the sluggishness of it. Her legs feel so heavy. Her hands begin to tremble and she has to concentrate to keep rubbing at herself. It’s slippery, she keeps losing traction, too frantic. 

Shiro pulls away for a moment, licking across the wounds before they can make a mess, and her eyes flick up to meet Keith’s. It pulses through her whole body. Watching the broad strokes of Shiro’s tongue reminds her of how it had felt earlier, on her clit, and the eroticism of the whole thing makes her moan. Shiro hums and goes back to the wound, clamping her lips around it. Her mouth is a little warmer now.

And her fingers are at Keith’s hole again. Also warm, almost human. She slips inside so easily but she goes slow, draws it out. It seems comforting and sensual amidst all the chaos. Keith almost hates her for it as she writhes against the bed.

“Shiro, please…”

She’s not sure what she’s asking for. She can feel the heat draining from her body, the color from her face. Lips going numb. She doesn’t know if she’s asking to come or to live. 

Shiro must sense that. Keith’s free hand reaches to hold her by the hair, to push it away from her face to see her better. How she has the fucking nerve to look shy after all of this, Keith can’t know, but her eyes are big and worried. She pulls back for a moment, her teeth covered in red, watching Keith’s face as she bites her own tongue.

The blood wells up in her mouth, darker than Keith’s, and she begins to lick over the wounds again. 

It’s different from feeling her _energy_ —this is more physical, more real somehow. Keith feels the blood the moment it hits her own, a little shock of electricity that crashes into her, sends her orgasm over the edge. Her thighs squeeze around Shiro’s shoulders, shake and strain and they both work her over. 

_What are you?_ she wants to ask, but doesn’t think she’ll get an answer. Her shoulders go lax as she sinks against her bed, as her hands drop to her sides and she stares at the ceiling. Some of Shiro’s memories make a little more sense. She can see them clearer now.

_Blood drinker_ , they called her. 

Shiro draws her hand back from Keith’s body and then she’s licking through her folds once more. It doesn’t seem focused on her pleasure this time, more like she’s cleaning up. Shiro feels different now. Warm and alive. It’s such a contrast, and it’s so horrifying that the heat is stolen. It’s _Keith’s_ , her life. Her blood.

Well, not stolen. Maybe it’s borrowed.

She touches the inside of her thigh, where Shiro had bitten, and it’s healed already, smooth beneath her fingers. There’s a deep ache when she presses, like a fading bruise, but it feels so good. She presses in harder, massages at it for a moment.

“Come here,” Keith mumbles. She reaches for Shiro’s shoulders to pull her up. The pull of resistance is so shocking, fucking unmovable, but Keith does her best puppy eyes and Shiro relents. 

Shiro’s heavier than she looks. Made of something else, Keith guesses. Dense and supernatural. She lies across Keith’s body, still clothed, her sweater so soft against Keith’s breasts. _Warm_.

When they kiss, her mouth is hot. She can taste the notes of her own body, a sharp little spike that splits through the coppery taste of her own blood. She shudders, not sure if she’s turned on or grossed out. But it makes her feel connected to something, plugged in, and there’s an aftershock of Shiro’s energy that spreads through her body. It’s a cycle between them, a loop, and they’re connected. 

Shiro was right. Their souls have called to each other. 

Keith sweeps her hands up and down Shiro’s sides, touching everywhere. Fascinated by her. When she pulls back for air, Shiro’s eyes are bloodshot and shiny. So much depth, and somehow Keith knows that whatever Shiro is feeling is boundless, eternal, something that Keith can never understand while she’s alive. Shiro tilts her head and whispers something in another language.

“I can hear everything,” Shiro says. She kisses Keith on the temple. “Like your body has bloomed.”

Keith almost asks what the fuck that even means, but Shiro is kissing her jaw, the side of her neck, sliding down to rest her head on Keith’s chest. Her ear is right over Keith’s breast, and she’s so aware of the way her heart skips. Hard to keep it steady when she knows she’s being observed like this. Shiro rubs her cheek over the spot, happy to listen. Her hand curls lightly around Keith’s throat, not to choke her, but just to feel. It cages in her pulse, petting her, a finger dipping into the notch between her clavicles.

It’s uncomfortable at first—not Shiro’s fault, necessarily, just Keith’s usual anxiety about closeness—but it gets easier once she starts coming down. The psychic toll of everything starts to wash over and she feels like she could fall asleep like this. 

Shiro sits up right as she’s starting to doze off. She sits on her knees, straddling Keith’s waist, staring down to study her. There’s actual color in her face now. 

“You should eat something,” she says. 

Keith might be too tired to argue, but perhaps also too tired to comply. Her options are swirling back and forth in her head, ten steps behind already, when Shiro is up and out of the room, moving so quickly that Keith can’t even keep track.

She can hear her kitchen cabinets opening and closing, hears the pop of the fridge door. She rubs her face and groans, sits up. The flesh on the inside of her thigh is completely healed over and she touches it to see, as if she needs to convince herself it even happened. The tissue beneath doesn’t even hurt anymore, but her body ripples with remembered pleasure as she touches there. Fuck.

That she pulls the barest amount of clothes on is more for temperature than decency, and when she steps into the kitchen Shiro is handing her a bowl of trail mix.

“Eat this,” she says. “You need iron.”

“Uh, right…” she takes the bowl and sits at the table, watching as Shiro continues to look through her things. “Thanks.”

She takes little bird bites, suspicious. One peanut at a time. A raisin. She chews carefully.

“Can I help you find something?” she finally asks. 

“You don’t have enough food,” Shiro says. “Do you have pineapples?”

“I didn’t know there was iron in pineapples.”

“I like how they taste.”

“I thought you don’t eat food.”

Shiro pauses and turns to stare at her, completely calm. Doesn’t blink. Keith cracks a peanut between her teeth as it dawns on her.

_Oh._

“I might have a… can… somewhere….”

It’s hard to tell if Shiro is displeased or if it’s just her intense focus as she digs through the cabinet again, through all the dented cans. Keith actually doesn’t remember half of what’s in there, just always goes for it when they’re on discount. But Shiro finds it and stares for a moment, reads the label. She seems so skeptical when she opens it and smells it, but eventually dumps it into a bowl and puts it on the table. 

Keith eats one slowly, distracted by the sweetness, knowing she’s being watched. There’s a full-bodied awareness as she swallows, takes it into herself, still feels traces of Shiro inside, knows that in some way this will give back to her. It all feels connected.

“May I see your phone?” Shiro asks. Keith shrugs and points towards it, still on her nightstand in the next room, and Shiro is back at her side with it in an instant. She knows the passcode, which is… interesting. But Keith doesn’t actually mind that much. 

Shiro hovers over her and her thumb moves back and forth across the glass so quickly that it blurs in Keith’s vision.

“I’d like you to buy real food,” she says, and her voice is quiet but the tone is firm. She puts the phone down on the table and Keith sees she’s downloaded a grocery app. “I’ve put in my bank information. Please buy real food tomorrow.”

“Oh. Okay,” she peeks up at Shiro’s face. “Thanks.”

There’s a wave inside, another piece of information uncurling, something that came through during the feed. It’s a vision of Shiro in situations like this, forced to care for people, over and over. For… _centuries._ Forced to lead the others. Keith’s skin breaks out in chills as she wonders how _old_ Shiro is. 

“That isn’t important,” Shiro says.

She swallows a mouthful of pineapple, anxious and unhungry now. Puts the fork down. 

This has moved really fast.

“You seem a bit overwhelmed,” Shiro says. She squeezes Keith on the shoulder, then pets downward, grabs her loosely around her bicep to urge her away from the table. And Keith follows, not sure if she’s supposed to, not sure how to feel about everything. It’s so out of character, following like this, but it feels right. Her head hurts as she realizes how comforting it is, how natural it feels.

Shiro leads her into the bathroom and goes to work setting up the tub. Lighting the candles and everything, just like Keith would. Keith steps away and grabs her bubbler from the vanity drawer, packs a bowl as the tub fills up.

“You don’t smoke, right?” she asks, just to be polite. 

Shiro shakes her head but her eyes are alight with mirth.

The last couple days have felt like forever, but it strikes Keith, watching Shiro undress, that it’s still so new. She hasn’t even seen Shiro nude yet, despite how much of herself she’s exposed. She puts the bubbler down to take off her own clothes, and then she’s at Shiro’s side, ready to touch. Her skin is so stark and smooth, too perfect to be human, gleaming in the candlelight. Keith comes closer to touch, to see, and she’s still warm but doesn’t feel human at all, too hard underneath. Too strong. 

There are scars up close, all over, and she can imagine them as wounds. She sees one flash in her mind, a memory, as she touches it. They’re so old now that Keith can barely feel them, only knows they’re there because she looked.

“Come,” Shiro says, not acknowledging at all, and climbs into the tub. She spreads her legs beneath the water and Keith settles there, her back to Shiro’s chest. She takes another long drag from the bubbler and lets herself feel the warmth around them.

Shiro doesn’t speak, but her hand skims back and forth over the water like she’s marveling at it. She scoops up little handfuls to drip across Keith’s shoulders. As the weed starts to kick in, glowing inside, it starts to feel like the usual ritual. Smoking to smooth over the energy, letting it all blend out until it makes sense. Except she’s not alone this time.

Her eyes close and she doesn’t feed on Shiro this time, but just checks in with the energy. Feels it around her. Safe and familiar now. She reaches to put the bubbler on the window sill, satisfied for now, and sinks down against Shiro’s body.

Beneath the water, Shiro pets back and forth over Keith’s stomach. She kisses the top of Keith’s head.

“I’m sorry if I frighten you,” she says after a while. 

Keith rubs her hands up and down Shiro’s thighs. “You don’t. It’s not that.”

“You’re anxious, I can feel it.”

Keith opens her eyes and stares at the water. Shiro’s hand is so pale against her. She doesn’t have words, but wonders if Shiro will understand anyway. It’s not fear, not the way she’s thinking. Not about her nature, necessarily. It’s about Keith, if anything else. It’s insecurity, it’s confusion. 

“I know you’re lonely,” Keith says. And she feels so small, so stupid and young. Not really sure what Shiro even wants. “But I can’t fix you. I don’t know if I’m the answer you’re looking for.”

Shiro gives her a light squeeze on the ribs. Reassuring. “I know, child.”

Keith’s heart thuds and she twists to look at Shiro’s face. “I can try, though. I want to try.”

“You’re very sweet,” Shiro says. She pets Keith’s hair, touch lingering on her earlobe. She kisses Keith’s temple, then her cheek, and she pulls away for a moment, looking Keith in the face like she needs permission before going lower.

“Do it,” Keith whispers. “It’s fine.”

Shiro licks her lips and Keith sees a quick flash of her fangs as her mouth opens, and then she’s leaning in, kissing Keith’s throat, sucking over the throbbing artery before she sinks her teeth in.

Keith squeezes around Shiro’s legs as the tension ripples through, her muscles seizing out of instinct, but it only takes a moment for the pleasure to follow it. She massages the opposite side of Keith’s neck as she does it, then drifts down, thumbs over her nipple and twists her nipple ring. Her hand cups around Keith’s breast. 

The channel between them opens again, the flow of Shiro’s energy and Keith’s blood. The exchanges replenish each other, complete each other. It might take a while for things to make sense, but Keith thinks maybe they’re built for each other. 

There’s a strange surge in her body, not quite sexual, but she shakes like she’s having an orgasm. It isn’t centered on any erogenous spots, the way pleasure usually is, but something inundating her entire body, something mental. Shiro pulls her in close and there’s pressure around her ribs, forcing her to breathe slowly as it passes through, and Shiro is licking across the wounds just like she had before, healing them with her own blood.

Everything feels different.

It’s not just the blood loss, not even just the drugs. It’s the shared experience, too, it’s everything. She stares down at her own hands and can feel the magic in them, both of their magic, and it feels like a missing piece has clicked into place.

Shiro settles back against the tub and lets out a giggle. Keith turns to look and her head is resting against the edge, eyes hooded. The smile on her face is so soft and goofy, unworried about showing off her teeth. She rubs her thumb along Keith’s bottom lip and shakes with breathy laughter. Keith sucks on her lip ring as she tries to suppress her own smile.

“You’re stoned,” she says. Shiro’s eyes crinkle, showing off little lines that usually aren’t there. So human.

“So are you,” she says. “I like how you taste.”

Keith doesn’t know if Shiro’s skin can prune like a regular person’s, but she’s starting to feel gross. She’s the one who initiates leaving the tub, grabbing towels, blowing out the candles. The water seems to slide off Shiro’s skin, almost like it isn’t even porous, but she dabs at herself with the towel in imitation. 

“Where is your cat?” she asks, face still full of joy, and Keith thinks it’s the cutest fucking thing that she goes to pick her up off the couch and curl into bed with her. Keith pulls on a sweater, a pair of boyshorts, and joins them. Eupheme purrs as Shiro strokes her fur, totally riveted by her.

In a weird way, Keith relates to it. Watches how Shiro treats her and realizes that maybe she’s also Shiro’s _pet_. 

And in a weird way, she’s kinda okay with that.

Keith is dozing when Shiro begins to move, to collect her clothes and get dressed. She runs her fingers through Keith’s hair, pushes it away from her face, hovers over her in the dark.

“I have to leave,” she says. And Keith is starting to figure it out.

“Is it because of the sunrise?”

“Yes.” 

She blinks the sleep away and catches Shiro by the wrist, kisses the palm of her hand. “So you’ll come back?”

“Always, sweetheart.”

There’s a gentle rustling in the apartment as Shiro disappears, too fast for Keith to see. Papers fluttering and the wind chime over the door ringing. And then it’s quiet.

She gets out of bed and stands over by the window, the one over her altar. The sky is just barely starting to lighten, just enough to make out the horizon. She cracks the window open and breathes the fresh air. Crisp and chilly.

It’s Halloween, isn’t it?

She peeks down at the altar and her crystals are all glowing, just barely, just enough. She hasn’t gotten around to hanging the picture of her parents back up and it’s moving again. Her dad turns to kiss her mom on the cheek, and she’s laughing, covering her face, pretending to shove him away.

Keith lifts the picture frame, holds it closer to watch. She can almost hear it, hear her mom’s laughter, even though she has no memories of it. 

They look happy.

“Happy Halloween, guys,” she mumbles, and they freeze back into place as she sets it back down. 

As she turns to get back into bed there’s a little metal _ping,_ and she looks down to see their wedding ring rolling across the floor. It hits her in the foot.

Weird.

**SATURDAY**

* * *

She stands out on her balcony, crystals in hand, watching the trick-or-treaters down in the street. She rubs the crystals and feels the energy shocking through her skin, taps her foot as she waits for the last of the sunlight to disappear.

_Come to me_ , she prays. Her heart races and the hunger burns inside.

_Come back. Come back. Come back._

**Author's Note:**

> [Say hi on twitter!](https://twitter.com/kacyinthecosmos/status/1310340096982474757)


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